NSA, GCHQ ‘planted agents’ into World of Warcraft

NSA, GCHQ ‘planted agents’ into World of Warcraft, Second Life to spy on gamers

The NSA and the UK’s GCHQ spying agencies have collected players’ charts and deployed real-life agents into online World of Warcraft and Second Life games, a new leak by whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed.

An NSA document from 2008, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use  of Games & Virtual Environments,” was published Monday by The Guardian in  partnership with The New York Times and ProPublica.

In the report, the agency warned of the risk of leaving games  communities under-monitored and described them as a   “target-rich communications network” where intelligence  targets could “hide in plain sight.”

The document showed that the US and UK spy agencies were  collecting large amounts of data in the Xbox Live console  network, which has more than 48 million players.

Real-life agents have been deployed into the World of Warcraft  multiplayer online role-playing game and the virtual world of  Second Life, in which people interact with each other through  avatars.

The NSA and GCHQ also tried to recruit potential informants among  the gamers, the report said.

A visitor plays the computer game “World of Warcraft” at the world’s biggest high-tech fair, the CeBIT (AFP Photo / Nigel Treblin)

The NSA had so many agents inside the games that a special   “de-confliction” group was set up to make sure they  wouldn’t hamper each other’s operations.

If analyzed properly, the online games can become a major source  of intelligence data, the unnamed author of the paper stressed.
They could be used to build pictures of the players’ social  networks, obtain their photos and geographical locations, as well  as gather their communications. The games were also a convenient  window for hacking attacks, the report said.

However, the document provided no information about terrorist  plots uncovered via online games surveillance, or any proof of  terrorist organizations using them for communication.

The document only stated that: “Al-Qaeda terrorist target  selectors… have been found associated with XboxLive, Second Life,  World of Warcraft, and other GVEs [Games and Virtual  Environments].”
Other NSA targets mentioned in the report include “Chinese  hackers, an Iranian nuclear scientist, Hezbollah and Hamas  members.”  

The paper provides only one example when spying in online games  managed to produce a piece of usable intelligence data.
After the closure of a website, which sold stolen credit cards  details, GCHQ managed to follow and establish contact with the  swindlers, as they moved their business to Second Life.

The World of Warcraft creators from Blizzard Entertainment said  that they had not given permission to NSA or GCHQ to gather  intelligence inside the game, and were “unaware of any  surveillance taking place.”
Microsoft and Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life,  declined to comment on the issue when approached by Guardian  journalists.
According to the document, the NSA bosses took some persuading to  launch the surveillance program in XboxLive, Second Life and  World of Warcraft amid concerns that those behind the program  only wanted to play games at their desks during working hours.

Concerns that the games could be used to “reinforce prejudices  and cultural stereotypes” were also expressed in the  Snowden-leaked document.
It mentioned the ‘Special Forces 2’ game, which was developed by  the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, and was used as a “radicalizing  medium” to recruit and train “suicide martyrs.”
But the document acknowledged that Hezbollah had only taken a  leaf out of the book of the US Army, which produced a  free-to-download game for its recruitment page.