Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2015 11:37:41 GMT
THE POINT IS.... If you know about all this stuff, you now know how important it is to look out for the well-being of other gamers, especially if they are teens/children that appear to be getting exposed to questionable people (terrorists). If you care about your games, you care about protecting the good people that use them and helping to get rid of the terrorists gumming up everyone else's Fun! "IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING" is more important for gamers than anyone else at this point!
(AGAIN: Terrorist propagnda has the gamer universe angry that the Feds will take their games away. That is patently UNTRUE. Why would they take away a platform they might learn how to track terrorists down on? That doesn't make sense. It's not rational thinking. That is terrorist-implanted-thought-patterns.)
*Be Careful Out There* <3
How ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PlayStation 4 To Discuss And Plan Attacks [Updated]
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/14/why-the-paris-isis-terrorists-used-ps4-to-plan-attacks/
November 13, 2015 Paul Tassi , Forbes Tech Contributor
Correction: It has not been confirmed, as originally written, that a console was found as a result of specific Belgian terror raids. Minister Jambon was speaking about tactics he knows ISIS to be using generally.
Following Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris which killed at least 127 people and left more than 300 injured, authorities are discovering just how the massacre was planned. And it may involve the most popular gaming console in the world, Sony ’s PlayStation 4.
The hunt for those responsible (eight terrorists were killed Saturday night, but accomplices may still be at large) led to a number of raids in nearby Brussels. Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon has said outright that the PS4 is used by ISIS agents to communicate, and was selected due to the fact that it’s notoriously hard to monitor. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said.
When the new generation of consoles launched, there were concerns that they would be too light on privacy, with peripherals like Microsoft’s Kinect and PlayStation’s Camera possibly having the ability to spy on users if say, the government wanted a window into your living room.
[(.......Also the ability Smart TV's have to video/audio monitor anyone in the same room........)]
While the idea is certainly Orwellian, it’s the non-peripheral based communication on consoles which may provide terrorists a channel to effectively converse with one another. The comparatively low-tech system may offer a more secure means of communication than even encrypted phone calls, texts and email.
While it remains unclear whether the Paris ISIS terrorists employed PS4 to communicate, there are a few options, from sending messages through the PlayStation Network (PSN) online gaming service and voice-chatting to even communicating through a specific game. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that the NSA and CIA actually embedded themselves in games like World of Warcraft to infiltrate virtual terrorist meet-ups.
[(........Also all versions of Call of Duty, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and any other popular game with lots of users to hide amongst and prey upon with their brainwashing and isolation tactics: terrorists use audio/video to guage the reaction they are having on potential victims it's not just the "good guys" that do that.........)]
With PlayStation 4, it seems likely that simple voice communication could have worked just fine. It’s still difficult for investigators to monitor IP-based voice systems compared to say, a simple cellphone. In 2010, the FBI pushed for access to all manner of Internet communications, including gaming chat systems. The FCC did not grant the FBI access to peer-to-peer communications, but the government agency did build its own rigs to record their communications in pursuit of criminals in organized chats, like a pedophile trying to lure kids via Xbox Live. Most consoles today come equipped with such capabilities, as nearly anything you do on your unit can be recorded if you want, in this age of YouTube and livestreaming.
The point is that terrorists could simply be in a PSN party together and chatting away mostly free from the fear that anyone is listening because of the difficulty and infrequency of governments eavesdropping on those forms of communication. It remains unclear just how much access the government has gotten to places like PSN and Xbox Live in the past few years, but whatever it is, it’s likely still short of its ability to track more traditional forms of communication, such as cellphones and computers.
By last count, PSN alone had around 110 million users, 65 million of them active, making this no small pool of people. While government agencies can often build profiles of suspected terrorists based on their Internet or communication history, it’s much harder to profile someone based on console usage, if that data is even accessible. Few users would visit extremist’s sites in the PSN Web browser for instance or brag about future attacks in a public game lobby. There is no collection of games that really should raise “suspicion” about possible terrorist ties in an era where terrorism-filled Call of Duty titles are the best-selling games of the year, every year. How do you “profile” a gamer when information is not easy to access, and probably will tell you nothing even if you could get your hands on it?
[(........They talk publicly in code words: for instance "brides" and "weddings" are used instead of "targets" and "attacks" among many other coded chats.....)]
Additionally, there are probably still a number of ways that terrorists could send messages to each other without speaking a word, if they really wanted to. An ISIS agent could spell out an attack plan in Super Mario Maker’s coins and share it privately with a friend, or two Call of Duty players could write messages to each other on a wall in a disappearing spray of bullets. It may sound ridiculous, but there are many in-game ways of non-verbal communication that would almost be impossible to track. To do so would require an FBI or NSA agent somehow tapping all the activity on an entire console, not just voice and text chat, and that should not even be technically possible at this point.
While the makers of burner phones were once criticized for making it easier for criminals to communicate, it seems unlikely Microsoft and Sony will face the same scrutiny (not that they should). And yet, they may be inclined to start providing easier ways for governments to monitor specific accounts or consoles than what’s readily available now. Because as it is, the most popular gaming devices also happen to be the most effective at connecting not just the world’s friends, but the world’s enemies as well.
Forbes Tech - Paul Tassi , Contributor - November 16, 2015
On Game Consoles, Terrorism And Missing The Point
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/16/on-game-consoles-terrorism-and-missing-the-point/
This weekend, an unspeakable tragedy occurred in Paris where ISIS terrorists unleashed attacks all over the city, killing 129 and wounding hundreds more. I watched with horror, never thinking that my video game beat would ever cross paths with such a terrible event.
But it did. My editors came to me with a story about how the Belgian federal home affairs minister had recently spoken about how PlayStation 4 was used by the terrorists to communicate. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said. Since the attack, Belgium itself had started raiding alleged ISIS safehouses, and the issue seemed relevant.
I wrote the post, and talked a bit about why it’s possible for terrorists to communicate via gaming platforms like PlayStation because they’re notoriously hard to monitor as a peer-to-peer chat service. The government has also had trouble getting access to services like Skype and WhatsApp for the same reasons, but party chat on a game console especially is a place few federal officials seem to be able to monitor.
What followed was an outpouring of angry gamers, thinking I was condemning consoles or somehow blaming them for the attacks.
It’s not true, but it’s fine. It’s a heated topic attached to a horrible tragedy, and I understand why those two components mixed together may incur a hostile reaction. That was not my intent, however, and as such, I wanted to go back and talk a bit more about why this is an important issue to discuss and understand. And I want to refute a few points specifically.
"This is a Hit Piece on Sony"
Some gamers have spun this story by saying it’s an attack on Sony itself, as it’s somehow trying to smear their name by linking their product with ISIS. Clearly, this is a pro-Microsoft agenda at work.
In no way is that the case. If the minster had mentioned Xbox One, I would have reported that, and there is nothing to indicate that somehow the PS4 is a “better” communication tool for terrorists, as there’s nothing about the PSN architecture that should make it such over Xbox Live, nor did I say anything like that in the piece. I do not know why a PS4 was cited, but stating the fact that it was referenced is not some indicator of bias against a particular company. It is simply what was reported. I have reached out to Sony to hopefully chat about data collection on PSN, and how they possibly work with authorities when need be.
"I’m Calling for a Video Game Surveillance State"
Again, in the piece I try to discuss why it’s been tough for federal agencies to monitor communication services like PSN and Xbox Live. It’s more complex than simply tapping a phone, and so far as we know, the government has been unable to get that kind of access in the past few years, or they just haven’t pursued it much. That may change, however, depending on how this investigation unfolds. Security experts do not consider game consoles an ultra-secure form of communication, but by flying under federal radar they can be a low-tech alternative that is being used all the same.
Surveillance is always a thorny topic and I respect points of view that want the government not snooping anywhere, really. Yet, if the government can tap the phone or monitor the email account of a suspected terrorist, it does seem logical that they would want a way to possibly log their PSN or XBL communications as well, if such a thing were possible. This isn’t to say this is “right,” depending on your view of surveillance and counter-terrorism, but it is likely going to be an issue between the government and console manufacturers in the future.
"My In-Game Communication Examples Were Crazy"
I got a lot of flak for pushing past the obvious ways terrorist might be able to communicate through consoles (chat and text) and said that if they really wanted, there could be ways to send messages through gameplay itself in certain titles. My examples were spelling things out in Mario Maker levels, or even shooting a wall in Call of Duty to form letters.
Does it sound silly? Sure. Are there more efficient ways of covert communication? Yeah. But I stand by the idea that there are hundreds of different in-game ways that agents could pass messages between each other that could not be monitored the way text and voice chat probably could. Hell, you could probably come up with a coded alphabet using Destiny emotes if you really wanted to.
It sounds goofy, and I was not saying any of these methods were used in these attacks, but I also don’t see the need to dismiss the idea outright when over the years, various intelligence agencies have used all manner of insane ways to get messages to one another. Cold War-era coded newspaper ads seem even more out there to me than two players somehow trading in-game messages during a co-op gameplay session. It is significant that things like that would be almost entirely impossible to monitor, even with full access to chat and voice.
"I’m “Scaremongering” by Linking Video Games and Terrorism Unfairly"
A lot of angry gamers showed up to read my post apparently thinking that I was attempting to say that the hobby of gaming itself is somehow linked to terrorism. Since I love gaming and write about it for a living, that’s the kind of thinking I despise, and I see it all the time when the media tries to blame mass shootings on games.
But that’s not what this conversation was about. I was not saying terrorists were training for the attacks using violent video games. Not even close. Rather, the issue is that they are able to use consoles as a low-tech way to covertly communicate with one another. Given the prevalence of consoles worldwide, it is a legitimate issue to discuss, and simply talking about it does not condemn the entire video game industry or specific companies in it.
A few years ago, FBI and NSA agents actually infiltrated World of Warcraft because terrorists were meeting up there as an under-the-radar way to discuss plans. The revelation of that fact did not lay blame on Blizzard or World of Warcraft, just like this recent issue does not mean Sony or the PS4 is somehow at fault here. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a discussion about the issue. Should consoles be considered targets for surveillance, or should the government stay away since it’s a potentially new form of privacy violation? It’s a complex issue, and one I do not have firm answers to.
There is no mass link between video game consoles and terrorism. In this case, it does seem there may have been a specific link, however. To not report that because it might make “gaming culture” look bad if someone reads a headline the wrong way is just something I can’t accept.
All this said, the post was meant to be instructive, rather than alarmist, but I understand that some interpreted that way. If that was the case, I apologize, but I do think this is a discussion worth having.
Dragnets
Tracking Censorship and Surveillance
World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games
www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games
by Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times, December 9, 2013
Note: This story is not subject to our Creative Commons license.
This story has been reported in partnership between The New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by The Guardian.
Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.
Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 NSA document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!,” another 2008 NSA document declared.
But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.
The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.
(Transcript: What are intelligence agencies doing in virtual worlds?)
Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”
The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured.
One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the NSA nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas.
"We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., which makes World of Warcraft. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."
A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and a former chief executive officer of Linden Lab, the game’s maker, declined to comment on the spying revelations. Current Linden executives did not respond to requests for comment.
A Government Communications Headquarters spokesman would neither confirm nor deny any involvement by that agency in gaming surveillance, but said that its work is conducted under “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight. An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials became interested in games after some became enormously popular, drawing tens of millions of people worldwide, from preteens to retirees. The games rely on lifelike graphics, virtual currencies and the ability to speak to other players in real time. Some gamers merge the virtual and real worlds by spending long hours playing and making close online friends.
In World of Warcraft, players share the same fantasy universe — walking around and killing computer-controlled monsters or the avatars of other players, including elves, animals or creatures known as orcs. In Second Life, players create customized human avatars that can resemble themselves or take on other personas — supermodels and bodybuilders are popular — who can socialize, buy and sell virtual goods, and go places like beaches, cities, art galleries and strip clubs. In Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, subscribers connect online in games that can involve activities like playing soccer or shooting at each other in space.
According to American officials and documents that Mr. Snowden provided to The Guardian, which shared them with The New York Times and ProPublica, spy agencies grew worried that terrorist groups might take to the virtual worlds to establish safe communications channels.
In 2007, as the NSA and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, NSA officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the NSA with a top-secret security clearance.
He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement. It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.”
Ondrejka, now the director of mobile engineering at Facebook, said through a representative that the NSA presentation was similar to others he gave in that period, and declined to comment further.
Even with spies already monitoring games, the NSA thought it needed to step up the effort.
“The Sigint Enterprise needs to begin taking action now to plan for collection, processing, presentation and analysis of these communications,” said one April 2008 NSA document, referring to “signals intelligence.” The document added, “With a few exceptions, NSA can’t even recognize the traffic,” meaning that the agency could not distinguish gaming data from other Internet traffic.
By the end of 2008, according to one document, the British spy agency, known as GCHQ, had set up its “first operational deployment into Second Life” and had helped the police in London in cracking down on a crime ring that had moved into virtual worlds to sell stolen credit card information. The British spies running the effort, which was code-named “Operation Galician,” were aided by an informer using a digital avatar “who helpfully volunteered information on the target group’s latest activities.”
Though the games might appear to be unregulated digital bazaars, the companies running them reserve the right to police the communications of players and store the chat dialogues in servers that can be searched later. The transactions conducted with the virtual money common in the games, used in World of Warcraft to buy weapons and potions to slay monsters, are also monitored by the companies to prevent illicit financial dealings.
In the 2008 NSA document, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments,” the agency said that “terrorist target selectors” — which could be a computer’s Internet Protocol address or an email account — “have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft” and other games. But that document does not present evidence that terrorists were participating in the games.
Still, the intelligence agencies found other benefits in infiltrating these online worlds. According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.
At Menwith Hill, a Royal Air Force base in the Yorkshire countryside that the NSA has long used as an outpost to intercept global communications, American and British intelligence operatives started an effort in 2008 to begin collecting data from World of Warcraft.
One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes. A British document from later that year said that GCHQ had “successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live.”
By 2009, the collection was extensive. One document says that while GCHQ was testing its ability to spy on Second Life in real time, British intelligence officers vacuumed up three days’ worth of Second Life chat, instant message and financial transaction data, totaling 176,677 lines of data, which included the content of the communications.
For their part, players have openly worried that the NSA might be watching them.
In one World of Warcraft discussion thread, begun just days after the first Snowden revelations appeared in the news media in June, a human death knight with the user name “Crrassus” asked whether the NSA might be reading game chat logs.
“If they ever read these forums,” wrote a goblin priest with the user name “Diaya,” “they would realize they were wasting” their time.
Even before the American government began spying in virtual worlds, the Pentagon had identified the potential intelligence value of video games. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command in 2006 and 2007 worked with several foreign companies — including an obscure digital media business based in Prague — to build games that could be downloaded to mobile phones, according to people involved in the effort. They said the games, which were not identified as creations of the Pentagon, were then used as vehicles for intelligence agencies to collect information about the users.
Eager to cash in on the government’s growing interest in virtual worlds, several large private contractors have spent years pitching their services to American intelligence agencies. In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”
It is unclear whether SAIC received a contract based on this proposal, but one former SAIC employee said that the company at one point had a lucrative contract with the CIA for work that included monitoring the Internet for militant activity. An SAIC spokeswoman declined to comment.
In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. “We were told it was highly likely that persons of interest were using virtual spaces to communicate or coordinate,” said Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California who received grant money as part of the program.
After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.
It is not clear how useful such research might be. A group at the Palo Alto Research Center, for example, produced a government-funded study of World of Warcraft that found “younger players and male players preferring competitive, hack-and-slash activities, and older and female players preferring noncombat activities,” such as exploring the virtual world. A group from the nonprofit SRI International, meanwhile, found that players under age 18 often used all capital letters both in chat messages and in their avatar names.
Those involved in the project were told little by their government patrons. According to Nick Yee, a Palo Alto researcher who worked on the effort, “We were specifically asked not to speculate on the government’s motivations and goals.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.
Sony Responds To Accusations That PS4 Is Communication Tool For Terrorism
GameInformer News
by Mike Futter on November 16, 2015
www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/11/16/sony-responds-to-accusations-that-ps4-is-communication-tool-for-terrorism.aspx
Last week, days before a horrific terrorist attack in Paris that shook the world, Belgium’s deputy prime minister Jan Jambon raised concerns about PlayStation Network. Specifically, Jambon (who also serves as the country’s minister of Security and Home Affairs) identified intense encryption on PSN inhibiting security services from monitoring for potential threats.
Speaking at a Politico-sponsored event on November 10, Jambon indicates that terrorists might be using gaming networks to coordinate. “I heard that the most difficult communication [to crack] between these terrorists is PlayStation 4,” he said.
He goes on to indicate that Belgian security services have been attempting to penetrate the networks to monitor for terrorist activity. “It’s very, very difficult for our services, not only Belgian services but international services, to decrypt the communication that is done via PlayStation 4,” Jambon says.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that world governments have attempted to monitor gaming networks. In late 2013, information leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden indicated that the National Security Agency has monitored Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, and Second Life.
It’s important to note that there is no evidence that those that perpetrated last week’s attacks in France communicated via PlayStation Network or any other gaming service. Jambon’s statements, days ahead of those attacks are not directly related.
Sony has issues a statement to Eurogamer regarding the accusations.
PlayStation 4 allows for communication amongst friends and fellow gamers and, in common with all modern connected devices, this has the potential to be abused. However, we take our responsibilities to protect our users extremely seriously and we urge our users and partners to report activities that may be offensive, suspicious or illegal. When we identify or are notified of such conduct, we are committed to taking appropriate actions in conjunction with the appropriate authorities and will continue to do so.
[Source: Eurogamer, Politico]
Our Take
Assuming that there is a direct link between the Paris attacks and gaming networks would be a mistake. However, as more reports emerge about government interest in monitoring these communications, gamers should be aware that - as with all online interactions - nothing should be considered entirely private.
Joystick jihad: Sony's PlayStation 4 could be terrorists' communication tool, experts warn
By James Rogers Published November 16, 2015 FoxNews.com
www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/11/16/sonys-playstation-4-could-be-terrorists-communication-tool-experts-warn.html
After Friday’s horrific terror attacks on Paris, security experts are weighing the frightening possibility that Sony’s PlayStation 4 has become a communication tool for terrorists.
Three days before Friday’s terrifying events in the French capital, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon warned that terrorists have harnessed the popular game console to pass messages between each other, making communications difficult, if not impossible for intelligence experts to track.
“The most difficult communication between these terrorists is via PlayStation 4,” said Jambon at a conference organized by Politico. “It’s very, very difficult for our services — not only Belgian services but international services — to decrypt the communication that is done via PlayStation 4.”
Related: Anonymous declares 'war' on ISIS, vows cyberattacks
Experts agree that Sony’s PlayStation 4 poses a huge challenge for governments’ security services.
“There is no doubt that terrorists and other underground networks are using PlayStation and other non-traditional means to communicate with each other,” said Paul Martini, CEO of cyber security specialist iboss Cybersecurity, in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. The CEO noted that the languages and protocols that PlayStation uses to communicate over the Internet are much different from those used in web browsers and other apps. “They are typically encrypted communication channels that are built on custom-designed languages built for speed and security - since PlayStation involves multi-player Internet connected users, it’s very distributed, high speed and difficult to track and monitor,” Martini added.
In addition to the PlayStation Network’s encrypted text and voice communication, experts warn that terrorists could also use other methods to pass messages within games.
Related: Zuckerberg defends Facebook's 'Safety Check' activation for Paris attack
“ISIS could use PlayStation to communicate with each other undetected, using the shooting of video game bullets to form messages,” said Ebba Blitz, president of encryption-as-a-service company Alertsec, in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. “That's because as far as we know, there are no automated detection systems sophisticated enough to intercept or monitor messages that are concealed as images or patterns in video games.”
“Anything which allows two people to exchange messages (whether it be talking, typing or waving semaphore flags at each other in a 3D virtual environment) could potentially be used by terrorists to communicate,” added Independent Security Expert Graham Cluley, in an email to FoxNews.com.
Sony PlayStation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies, told FoxNews.com that gaming networks in general can offer an alternate channel of communication for the likes of terrorists, along with a host of other technologies. "National Security Agency people that I've spoken to over the years have bemoaned the rising tide of difficult-to-decipher digital interchange, from voice, encrypted or not, but at least packet routed, to text, encrypted, encoded, or both, to messages embedded in pictures, to alternative networks, various encodings, and an array of devices," he said.
The end result is that security agencies have an incredibly tough job on their hands. “At this point, the bad guys are outrunning the good because there are just too many channels to monitor,” Kay added.
Related: Parisians harness #PorteOuverte hashtag to help people affected by terror attacks
The New York Times, citing documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, reported in 2013 that British and American spies had infiltrated online game “World of Warcraft” and virtual world Second Life in an attempt to conduct surveillance.
The NSA also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(AGAIN: Terrorist propagnda has the gamer universe angry that the Feds will take their games away. That is patently UNTRUE. Why would they take away a platform they might learn how to track terrorists down on? That doesn't make sense. It's not rational thinking. That is terrorist-implanted-thought-patterns.)
*Be Careful Out There* <3
How ISIS Terrorists May Have Used PlayStation 4 To Discuss And Plan Attacks [Updated]
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/14/why-the-paris-isis-terrorists-used-ps4-to-plan-attacks/
November 13, 2015 Paul Tassi , Forbes Tech Contributor
Correction: It has not been confirmed, as originally written, that a console was found as a result of specific Belgian terror raids. Minister Jambon was speaking about tactics he knows ISIS to be using generally.
Following Friday night’s terrorist attacks in Paris which killed at least 127 people and left more than 300 injured, authorities are discovering just how the massacre was planned. And it may involve the most popular gaming console in the world, Sony ’s PlayStation 4.
The hunt for those responsible (eight terrorists were killed Saturday night, but accomplices may still be at large) led to a number of raids in nearby Brussels. Belgian federal home affairs minister Jan Jambon has said outright that the PS4 is used by ISIS agents to communicate, and was selected due to the fact that it’s notoriously hard to monitor. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said.
When the new generation of consoles launched, there were concerns that they would be too light on privacy, with peripherals like Microsoft’s Kinect and PlayStation’s Camera possibly having the ability to spy on users if say, the government wanted a window into your living room.
[(.......Also the ability Smart TV's have to video/audio monitor anyone in the same room........)]
While the idea is certainly Orwellian, it’s the non-peripheral based communication on consoles which may provide terrorists a channel to effectively converse with one another. The comparatively low-tech system may offer a more secure means of communication than even encrypted phone calls, texts and email.
While it remains unclear whether the Paris ISIS terrorists employed PS4 to communicate, there are a few options, from sending messages through the PlayStation Network (PSN) online gaming service and voice-chatting to even communicating through a specific game. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 revealed that the NSA and CIA actually embedded themselves in games like World of Warcraft to infiltrate virtual terrorist meet-ups.
[(........Also all versions of Call of Duty, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and any other popular game with lots of users to hide amongst and prey upon with their brainwashing and isolation tactics: terrorists use audio/video to guage the reaction they are having on potential victims it's not just the "good guys" that do that.........)]
With PlayStation 4, it seems likely that simple voice communication could have worked just fine. It’s still difficult for investigators to monitor IP-based voice systems compared to say, a simple cellphone. In 2010, the FBI pushed for access to all manner of Internet communications, including gaming chat systems. The FCC did not grant the FBI access to peer-to-peer communications, but the government agency did build its own rigs to record their communications in pursuit of criminals in organized chats, like a pedophile trying to lure kids via Xbox Live. Most consoles today come equipped with such capabilities, as nearly anything you do on your unit can be recorded if you want, in this age of YouTube and livestreaming.
The point is that terrorists could simply be in a PSN party together and chatting away mostly free from the fear that anyone is listening because of the difficulty and infrequency of governments eavesdropping on those forms of communication. It remains unclear just how much access the government has gotten to places like PSN and Xbox Live in the past few years, but whatever it is, it’s likely still short of its ability to track more traditional forms of communication, such as cellphones and computers.
By last count, PSN alone had around 110 million users, 65 million of them active, making this no small pool of people. While government agencies can often build profiles of suspected terrorists based on their Internet or communication history, it’s much harder to profile someone based on console usage, if that data is even accessible. Few users would visit extremist’s sites in the PSN Web browser for instance or brag about future attacks in a public game lobby. There is no collection of games that really should raise “suspicion” about possible terrorist ties in an era where terrorism-filled Call of Duty titles are the best-selling games of the year, every year. How do you “profile” a gamer when information is not easy to access, and probably will tell you nothing even if you could get your hands on it?
[(........They talk publicly in code words: for instance "brides" and "weddings" are used instead of "targets" and "attacks" among many other coded chats.....)]
Additionally, there are probably still a number of ways that terrorists could send messages to each other without speaking a word, if they really wanted to. An ISIS agent could spell out an attack plan in Super Mario Maker’s coins and share it privately with a friend, or two Call of Duty players could write messages to each other on a wall in a disappearing spray of bullets. It may sound ridiculous, but there are many in-game ways of non-verbal communication that would almost be impossible to track. To do so would require an FBI or NSA agent somehow tapping all the activity on an entire console, not just voice and text chat, and that should not even be technically possible at this point.
While the makers of burner phones were once criticized for making it easier for criminals to communicate, it seems unlikely Microsoft and Sony will face the same scrutiny (not that they should). And yet, they may be inclined to start providing easier ways for governments to monitor specific accounts or consoles than what’s readily available now. Because as it is, the most popular gaming devices also happen to be the most effective at connecting not just the world’s friends, but the world’s enemies as well.
Forbes Tech - Paul Tassi , Contributor - November 16, 2015
On Game Consoles, Terrorism And Missing The Point
www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/11/16/on-game-consoles-terrorism-and-missing-the-point/
This weekend, an unspeakable tragedy occurred in Paris where ISIS terrorists unleashed attacks all over the city, killing 129 and wounding hundreds more. I watched with horror, never thinking that my video game beat would ever cross paths with such a terrible event.
But it did. My editors came to me with a story about how the Belgian federal home affairs minister had recently spoken about how PlayStation 4 was used by the terrorists to communicate. “PlayStation 4 is even more difficult to keep track of than WhatsApp,” he said. Since the attack, Belgium itself had started raiding alleged ISIS safehouses, and the issue seemed relevant.
I wrote the post, and talked a bit about why it’s possible for terrorists to communicate via gaming platforms like PlayStation because they’re notoriously hard to monitor as a peer-to-peer chat service. The government has also had trouble getting access to services like Skype and WhatsApp for the same reasons, but party chat on a game console especially is a place few federal officials seem to be able to monitor.
What followed was an outpouring of angry gamers, thinking I was condemning consoles or somehow blaming them for the attacks.
It’s not true, but it’s fine. It’s a heated topic attached to a horrible tragedy, and I understand why those two components mixed together may incur a hostile reaction. That was not my intent, however, and as such, I wanted to go back and talk a bit more about why this is an important issue to discuss and understand. And I want to refute a few points specifically.
"This is a Hit Piece on Sony"
Some gamers have spun this story by saying it’s an attack on Sony itself, as it’s somehow trying to smear their name by linking their product with ISIS. Clearly, this is a pro-Microsoft agenda at work.
In no way is that the case. If the minster had mentioned Xbox One, I would have reported that, and there is nothing to indicate that somehow the PS4 is a “better” communication tool for terrorists, as there’s nothing about the PSN architecture that should make it such over Xbox Live, nor did I say anything like that in the piece. I do not know why a PS4 was cited, but stating the fact that it was referenced is not some indicator of bias against a particular company. It is simply what was reported. I have reached out to Sony to hopefully chat about data collection on PSN, and how they possibly work with authorities when need be.
"I’m Calling for a Video Game Surveillance State"
Again, in the piece I try to discuss why it’s been tough for federal agencies to monitor communication services like PSN and Xbox Live. It’s more complex than simply tapping a phone, and so far as we know, the government has been unable to get that kind of access in the past few years, or they just haven’t pursued it much. That may change, however, depending on how this investigation unfolds. Security experts do not consider game consoles an ultra-secure form of communication, but by flying under federal radar they can be a low-tech alternative that is being used all the same.
Surveillance is always a thorny topic and I respect points of view that want the government not snooping anywhere, really. Yet, if the government can tap the phone or monitor the email account of a suspected terrorist, it does seem logical that they would want a way to possibly log their PSN or XBL communications as well, if such a thing were possible. This isn’t to say this is “right,” depending on your view of surveillance and counter-terrorism, but it is likely going to be an issue between the government and console manufacturers in the future.
"My In-Game Communication Examples Were Crazy"
I got a lot of flak for pushing past the obvious ways terrorist might be able to communicate through consoles (chat and text) and said that if they really wanted, there could be ways to send messages through gameplay itself in certain titles. My examples were spelling things out in Mario Maker levels, or even shooting a wall in Call of Duty to form letters.
Does it sound silly? Sure. Are there more efficient ways of covert communication? Yeah. But I stand by the idea that there are hundreds of different in-game ways that agents could pass messages between each other that could not be monitored the way text and voice chat probably could. Hell, you could probably come up with a coded alphabet using Destiny emotes if you really wanted to.
It sounds goofy, and I was not saying any of these methods were used in these attacks, but I also don’t see the need to dismiss the idea outright when over the years, various intelligence agencies have used all manner of insane ways to get messages to one another. Cold War-era coded newspaper ads seem even more out there to me than two players somehow trading in-game messages during a co-op gameplay session. It is significant that things like that would be almost entirely impossible to monitor, even with full access to chat and voice.
"I’m “Scaremongering” by Linking Video Games and Terrorism Unfairly"
A lot of angry gamers showed up to read my post apparently thinking that I was attempting to say that the hobby of gaming itself is somehow linked to terrorism. Since I love gaming and write about it for a living, that’s the kind of thinking I despise, and I see it all the time when the media tries to blame mass shootings on games.
But that’s not what this conversation was about. I was not saying terrorists were training for the attacks using violent video games. Not even close. Rather, the issue is that they are able to use consoles as a low-tech way to covertly communicate with one another. Given the prevalence of consoles worldwide, it is a legitimate issue to discuss, and simply talking about it does not condemn the entire video game industry or specific companies in it.
A few years ago, FBI and NSA agents actually infiltrated World of Warcraft because terrorists were meeting up there as an under-the-radar way to discuss plans. The revelation of that fact did not lay blame on Blizzard or World of Warcraft, just like this recent issue does not mean Sony or the PS4 is somehow at fault here. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a discussion about the issue. Should consoles be considered targets for surveillance, or should the government stay away since it’s a potentially new form of privacy violation? It’s a complex issue, and one I do not have firm answers to.
There is no mass link between video game consoles and terrorism. In this case, it does seem there may have been a specific link, however. To not report that because it might make “gaming culture” look bad if someone reads a headline the wrong way is just something I can’t accept.
All this said, the post was meant to be instructive, rather than alarmist, but I understand that some interpreted that way. If that was the case, I apologize, but I do think this is a discussion worth having.
Dragnets
Tracking Censorship and Surveillance
World of Spycraft: NSA and CIA Spied in Online Games
www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games
by Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times, December 9, 2013
Note: This story is not subject to our Creative Commons license.
This story has been reported in partnership between The New York Times, the Guardian and ProPublica based on documents obtained by The Guardian.
Not limiting their activities to the earthly realm, American and British spies have infiltrated the fantasy worlds of World of Warcraft and Second Life, conducting surveillance and scooping up data in the online games played by millions of people across the globe, according to newly disclosed classified documents.
Fearing that terrorist or criminal networks could use the games to communicate secretly, move money or plot attacks, the documents show, intelligence operatives have entered terrain populated by digital avatars that include elves, gnomes and supermodels.
The spies have created make-believe characters to snoop and to try to recruit informers, while also collecting data and contents of communications between players, according to the documents, disclosed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. Because militants often rely on features common to video games — fake identities, voice and text chats, a way to conduct financial transactions — American and British intelligence agencies worried that they might be operating there, according to the papers.
Online games might seem innocuous, a top-secret 2008 NSA document warned, but they had the potential to be a “target-rich communication network” allowing intelligence suspects “a way to hide in plain sight.” Virtual games “are an opportunity!,” another 2008 NSA document declared.
But for all their enthusiasm — so many CIA, FBI and Pentagon spies were hunting around in Second Life, the document noted, that a “deconfliction” group was needed to avoid collisions — the intelligence agencies may have inflated the threat.
The documents do not cite any counterterrorism successes from the effort, and former American intelligence officials, current and former gaming company employees and outside experts said in interviews that they knew of little evidence that terrorist groups viewed the games as havens to communicate and plot operations.
(Transcript: What are intelligence agencies doing in virtual worlds?)
Games “are built and operated by companies looking to make money, so the players’ identity and activity is tracked,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, an author of “Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know.” “For terror groups looking to keep their communications secret, there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar.”
The surveillance, which also included Microsoft’s Xbox Live, could raise privacy concerns. It is not clear exactly how the agencies got access to gamers’ data or communications, how many players may have been monitored or whether Americans’ communications or activities were captured.
One American company, the maker of World of Warcraft, said that neither the NSA nor its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters, had gotten permission to gather intelligence in its game. Many players are Americans, who can be targeted for surveillance only with approval from the nation’s secret intelligence court. The spy agencies, though, face far fewer restrictions on collecting certain data or communications overseas.
"We are unaware of any surveillance taking place," said a spokesman for Blizzard Entertainment, based in Irvine, Calif., which makes World of Warcraft. "If it was, it would have been done without our knowledge or permission."
A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment. Philip Rosedale, the founder of Second Life and a former chief executive officer of Linden Lab, the game’s maker, declined to comment on the spying revelations. Current Linden executives did not respond to requests for comment.
A Government Communications Headquarters spokesman would neither confirm nor deny any involvement by that agency in gaming surveillance, but said that its work is conducted under “a strict legal and policy framework” with rigorous oversight. An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment.
Intelligence and law enforcement officials became interested in games after some became enormously popular, drawing tens of millions of people worldwide, from preteens to retirees. The games rely on lifelike graphics, virtual currencies and the ability to speak to other players in real time. Some gamers merge the virtual and real worlds by spending long hours playing and making close online friends.
In World of Warcraft, players share the same fantasy universe — walking around and killing computer-controlled monsters or the avatars of other players, including elves, animals or creatures known as orcs. In Second Life, players create customized human avatars that can resemble themselves or take on other personas — supermodels and bodybuilders are popular — who can socialize, buy and sell virtual goods, and go places like beaches, cities, art galleries and strip clubs. In Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, subscribers connect online in games that can involve activities like playing soccer or shooting at each other in space.
According to American officials and documents that Mr. Snowden provided to The Guardian, which shared them with The New York Times and ProPublica, spy agencies grew worried that terrorist groups might take to the virtual worlds to establish safe communications channels.
In 2007, as the NSA and other intelligence agencies were beginning to explore virtual games, NSA officials met with the chief technology officer for the manufacturer of Second Life, the San Francisco-based Linden Lab. The executive, Cory Ondrejka, was a former Navy officer who had worked at the NSA with a top-secret security clearance.
He visited the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., in May 2007 to speak to staff members over a brown bag lunch, according to an internal agency announcement. “Second Life has proven that virtual worlds of social networking are a reality: come hear Cory tell you why!” said the announcement. It added that virtual worlds gave the government the opportunity “to understand the motivation, context and consequent behaviors of non-Americans through observation, without leaving U.S. soil.”
Ondrejka, now the director of mobile engineering at Facebook, said through a representative that the NSA presentation was similar to others he gave in that period, and declined to comment further.
Even with spies already monitoring games, the NSA thought it needed to step up the effort.
“The Sigint Enterprise needs to begin taking action now to plan for collection, processing, presentation and analysis of these communications,” said one April 2008 NSA document, referring to “signals intelligence.” The document added, “With a few exceptions, NSA can’t even recognize the traffic,” meaning that the agency could not distinguish gaming data from other Internet traffic.
By the end of 2008, according to one document, the British spy agency, known as GCHQ, had set up its “first operational deployment into Second Life” and had helped the police in London in cracking down on a crime ring that had moved into virtual worlds to sell stolen credit card information. The British spies running the effort, which was code-named “Operation Galician,” were aided by an informer using a digital avatar “who helpfully volunteered information on the target group’s latest activities.”
Though the games might appear to be unregulated digital bazaars, the companies running them reserve the right to police the communications of players and store the chat dialogues in servers that can be searched later. The transactions conducted with the virtual money common in the games, used in World of Warcraft to buy weapons and potions to slay monsters, are also monitored by the companies to prevent illicit financial dealings.
In the 2008 NSA document, titled “Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments,” the agency said that “terrorist target selectors” — which could be a computer’s Internet Protocol address or an email account — “have been found associated with Xbox Live, Second Life, World of Warcraft” and other games. But that document does not present evidence that terrorists were participating in the games.
Still, the intelligence agencies found other benefits in infiltrating these online worlds. According to the minutes of a January 2009 meeting, GCHQ’s “network gaming exploitation team” had identified engineers, embassy drivers, scientists and other foreign intelligence operatives to be World of Warcraft players — potential targets for recruitment as agents.
At Menwith Hill, a Royal Air Force base in the Yorkshire countryside that the NSA has long used as an outpost to intercept global communications, American and British intelligence operatives started an effort in 2008 to begin collecting data from World of Warcraft.
One NSA document said that the World of Warcraft monitoring “continues to uncover potential Sigint value by identifying accounts, characters and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation and arms dealing.” In other words, targets of interest appeared to be playing the fantasy game, though the document does not indicate that they were doing so for any nefarious purposes. A British document from later that year said that GCHQ had “successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live.”
By 2009, the collection was extensive. One document says that while GCHQ was testing its ability to spy on Second Life in real time, British intelligence officers vacuumed up three days’ worth of Second Life chat, instant message and financial transaction data, totaling 176,677 lines of data, which included the content of the communications.
For their part, players have openly worried that the NSA might be watching them.
In one World of Warcraft discussion thread, begun just days after the first Snowden revelations appeared in the news media in June, a human death knight with the user name “Crrassus” asked whether the NSA might be reading game chat logs.
“If they ever read these forums,” wrote a goblin priest with the user name “Diaya,” “they would realize they were wasting” their time.
Even before the American government began spying in virtual worlds, the Pentagon had identified the potential intelligence value of video games. The Pentagon’s Special Operations Command in 2006 and 2007 worked with several foreign companies — including an obscure digital media business based in Prague — to build games that could be downloaded to mobile phones, according to people involved in the effort. They said the games, which were not identified as creations of the Pentagon, were then used as vehicles for intelligence agencies to collect information about the users.
Eager to cash in on the government’s growing interest in virtual worlds, several large private contractors have spent years pitching their services to American intelligence agencies. In one 66-page document from 2007, part of the cache released by Mr. Snowden, the contracting giant SAIC promoted its ability to support “intelligence collection in the game space,” and warned that online games could be used by militant groups to recruit followers and could provide “terrorist organizations with a powerful platform to reach core target audiences.”
It is unclear whether SAIC received a contract based on this proposal, but one former SAIC employee said that the company at one point had a lucrative contract with the CIA for work that included monitoring the Internet for militant activity. An SAIC spokeswoman declined to comment.
In spring 2009, academics and defense contractors gathered at the Marriott at Washington Dulles International Airport to present proposals for a government study about how players’ behavior in a game like World of Warcraft might be linked to their real-world identities. “We were told it was highly likely that persons of interest were using virtual spaces to communicate or coordinate,” said Dmitri Williams, a professor at the University of Southern California who received grant money as part of the program.
After the conference, both SAIC and Lockheed Martin won contracts worth several million dollars, administered by an office within the intelligence community that finances research projects.
It is not clear how useful such research might be. A group at the Palo Alto Research Center, for example, produced a government-funded study of World of Warcraft that found “younger players and male players preferring competitive, hack-and-slash activities, and older and female players preferring noncombat activities,” such as exploring the virtual world. A group from the nonprofit SRI International, meanwhile, found that players under age 18 often used all capital letters both in chat messages and in their avatar names.
Those involved in the project were told little by their government patrons. According to Nick Yee, a Palo Alto researcher who worked on the effort, “We were specifically asked not to speculate on the government’s motivations and goals.”
Andrew W. Lehren contributed reporting.
Sony Responds To Accusations That PS4 Is Communication Tool For Terrorism
GameInformer News
by Mike Futter on November 16, 2015
www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2015/11/16/sony-responds-to-accusations-that-ps4-is-communication-tool-for-terrorism.aspx
Last week, days before a horrific terrorist attack in Paris that shook the world, Belgium’s deputy prime minister Jan Jambon raised concerns about PlayStation Network. Specifically, Jambon (who also serves as the country’s minister of Security and Home Affairs) identified intense encryption on PSN inhibiting security services from monitoring for potential threats.
Speaking at a Politico-sponsored event on November 10, Jambon indicates that terrorists might be using gaming networks to coordinate. “I heard that the most difficult communication [to crack] between these terrorists is PlayStation 4,” he said.
He goes on to indicate that Belgian security services have been attempting to penetrate the networks to monitor for terrorist activity. “It’s very, very difficult for our services, not only Belgian services but international services, to decrypt the communication that is done via PlayStation 4,” Jambon says.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard that world governments have attempted to monitor gaming networks. In late 2013, information leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden indicated that the National Security Agency has monitored Xbox Live, World of Warcraft, and Second Life.
It’s important to note that there is no evidence that those that perpetrated last week’s attacks in France communicated via PlayStation Network or any other gaming service. Jambon’s statements, days ahead of those attacks are not directly related.
Sony has issues a statement to Eurogamer regarding the accusations.
PlayStation 4 allows for communication amongst friends and fellow gamers and, in common with all modern connected devices, this has the potential to be abused. However, we take our responsibilities to protect our users extremely seriously and we urge our users and partners to report activities that may be offensive, suspicious or illegal. When we identify or are notified of such conduct, we are committed to taking appropriate actions in conjunction with the appropriate authorities and will continue to do so.
[Source: Eurogamer, Politico]
Our Take
Assuming that there is a direct link between the Paris attacks and gaming networks would be a mistake. However, as more reports emerge about government interest in monitoring these communications, gamers should be aware that - as with all online interactions - nothing should be considered entirely private.
Joystick jihad: Sony's PlayStation 4 could be terrorists' communication tool, experts warn
By James Rogers Published November 16, 2015 FoxNews.com
www.foxnews.com/tech/2015/11/16/sonys-playstation-4-could-be-terrorists-communication-tool-experts-warn.html
After Friday’s horrific terror attacks on Paris, security experts are weighing the frightening possibility that Sony’s PlayStation 4 has become a communication tool for terrorists.
Three days before Friday’s terrifying events in the French capital, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon warned that terrorists have harnessed the popular game console to pass messages between each other, making communications difficult, if not impossible for intelligence experts to track.
“The most difficult communication between these terrorists is via PlayStation 4,” said Jambon at a conference organized by Politico. “It’s very, very difficult for our services — not only Belgian services but international services — to decrypt the communication that is done via PlayStation 4.”
Related: Anonymous declares 'war' on ISIS, vows cyberattacks
Experts agree that Sony’s PlayStation 4 poses a huge challenge for governments’ security services.
“There is no doubt that terrorists and other underground networks are using PlayStation and other non-traditional means to communicate with each other,” said Paul Martini, CEO of cyber security specialist iboss Cybersecurity, in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. The CEO noted that the languages and protocols that PlayStation uses to communicate over the Internet are much different from those used in web browsers and other apps. “They are typically encrypted communication channels that are built on custom-designed languages built for speed and security - since PlayStation involves multi-player Internet connected users, it’s very distributed, high speed and difficult to track and monitor,” Martini added.
In addition to the PlayStation Network’s encrypted text and voice communication, experts warn that terrorists could also use other methods to pass messages within games.
Related: Zuckerberg defends Facebook's 'Safety Check' activation for Paris attack
“ISIS could use PlayStation to communicate with each other undetected, using the shooting of video game bullets to form messages,” said Ebba Blitz, president of encryption-as-a-service company Alertsec, in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com. “That's because as far as we know, there are no automated detection systems sophisticated enough to intercept or monitor messages that are concealed as images or patterns in video games.”
“Anything which allows two people to exchange messages (whether it be talking, typing or waving semaphore flags at each other in a 3D virtual environment) could potentially be used by terrorists to communicate,” added Independent Security Expert Graham Cluley, in an email to FoxNews.com.
Sony PlayStation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies, told FoxNews.com that gaming networks in general can offer an alternate channel of communication for the likes of terrorists, along with a host of other technologies. "National Security Agency people that I've spoken to over the years have bemoaned the rising tide of difficult-to-decipher digital interchange, from voice, encrypted or not, but at least packet routed, to text, encrypted, encoded, or both, to messages embedded in pictures, to alternative networks, various encodings, and an array of devices," he said.
The end result is that security agencies have an incredibly tough job on their hands. “At this point, the bad guys are outrunning the good because there are just too many channels to monitor,” Kay added.
Related: Parisians harness #PorteOuverte hashtag to help people affected by terror attacks
The New York Times, citing documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, reported in 2013 that British and American spies had infiltrated online game “World of Warcraft” and virtual world Second Life in an attempt to conduct surveillance.
The NSA also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.