Steven Davis of PlayNoEvil gives us an update on the recent incidents plaguing RMT transactions in Korea. From a recent Korea Times article, it looks as if a coordinated denial of service attack was launched out of China. From the article:

Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target well-known sites or services. But while this week's attacks were focused on the item trading companies, they didn't hurt the online game service companies themselves. Firms said that the hackers targeted the trading firms because their security systems are relatively vulnerable compared with those of game operators.

``They know that they cannot easily damage us. `Look before you leap' is what they are doing,'' said an official of NCsoft, the largest online game company in South Korea, which runs popular games such as ``Lineage'' and ``Guild Wars.''

And interestingly, the Korea Times itself was also targeted by similar attacks.

As Davis notes:

By creating vibrant online industries, such as online gaming, Korea has created an economic powerhouse. This economic engine is much more vulnerable to attack. Instead of a manageable physical border, every server is a potential target and every link a potential avenue of attack. This creates a border that no country is prepared to defend.

What is particularly dangerous is that launching a national cyberattack does not require the resources of a government, but it could be coordinated by a criminal or terrorist group with or without the support of a nation's government.

It's interesting to see that the online gaming and virtual item transactions in Korea create such a formidable market that they become targets for this kind of fierce attack -- and an example in practice of how essential it will become for virtual economies to attend to security as they grow.

[Via PlayNoEvil]