Hacker Steals $12 Million Worth of Zynga Poker Chips 99
Gamasutra reports that a 29-year-old British man has been convicted of hacking into Zynga's game servers and helping himself to 400 billion virtual poker chips.
"'The defendant sold around one third of the 400 billion poker chips, and looking at the auction history where one can purchase such items, he was selling them for around £430 ($695) per billion,' said prosecutor Gareth Evans, according to a report from local newspaper Herald Express. Sold legitimately through Zynga, the full amount of chips would have brought in some $12 million. The prosecutor estimated that if Mitchell sold all of the virtual chips on the black market, he would have made a fraction of that, around £184,000 ($297,000). Evans admitted that valuing virtual currency can be difficult and that the company was not actually deprived of tangible goods, but he said that the theft could still affect the developer by indirectly causing legitimate online gamers to stop playing Zynga Poker or its other games."
Prediction (Score:2)
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of currency is already "virtual", ie there is no gold or even paper currency there backing it up.
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Do you think Zynga will take care of the "inflation rate" on their currency? Do you think it is far the moment the "real-world persons" will start to be interested in different "virtual currencies"? How long 'til "real-world money" laundering/tax evasion and other schemes will get too tempting for the "Zynga's virtual economy" to refuse?
Being both virtual, how long 'til the financial will start trading real stock for "private virtual currency"?
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It's pretty much the same concept as buying a gift voucher for a store. If Zynga will honour their agreement, and the customer thinks it's worth the money, I don't see what the big deal is.
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It's pretty much the same concept as buying a gift voucher for a store. If Zynga will honour their agreement, and the customer thinks it's worth the money, I don't see what the big deal is.
Right... IF
IF the financial world would have honoured their agreement and would have not wrap toxic mortgages in triple-A bonds to be sold to customers that thought the triple-A rating is real, then we wouldn't have spoken now about world economic crisis.
IF the same financial world suddenly see Zynga-and-friends as a way to get around regulations and escape in an "unregulated virtual world", given that your salary in the bank and pension-funds is as "virtual" as the Zynga-dollars, what is going to happe
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You've got a choice. If you don't trust the dollar to have value - don't hold (significant amounts of) dollars.
Instead, buy something you expect will have value - or a combination of several such things for added insurance against one of them collapsing.
Think a kilo of gold will buy as much in the future as it will today ? Hold gold. Think that land will have value ? Buy land. Think that IBM is going to be a valuable company in the future ? Buy IBM. Think that the Yen is going to be worth something ? Hold Y
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Yes, I know... And this is scary: the fact Zynga can function as a "private mint", yet having their currency treated as it would be an official banknote (traded on black-market, valuated against real-world "virtual currency"... that is dollar... obtaining a conviction of a person for "stealing them"?).
Why is that scary? I find it inspiring. It means that alternative currencies are possible today.
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Yes, I know... And this is scary: the fact Zynga can function as a "private mint", yet having their currency treated as it would be an official banknote (traded on black-market, valuated against real-world "virtual currency"... that is dollar... obtaining a conviction of a person for "stealing them"?).
Why is that scary? I find it inspiring. It means that alternative currencies are possible today.
Because you may finish in loosing everything you worked for because the alternative currency is abused by a corporate you cannot even vote out every 4 years.
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Because you may finish in loosing everything you worked for because the alternative currency is abused by a corporate you cannot even vote out every 4 years.
Alternative currencies are the only way to prevent this! You can choose what to put your money into.
In a world so volatile that, if you are 200 msec late, you risk losing the value of your investment or savings? Good luck "putting your money in something at your choice".
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In a world so volatile that, if you are 200 msec late, you risk losing the value of your investment or savings? Good luck "putting your money in something at your choice".
Obviously you have to be cautious about who you do business with. But this is ultimately a good reason to avoid using US currency at all, or dealing with any major banks.
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In a world so volatile that, if you are 200 msec late, you risk losing the value of your investment or savings? Good luck "putting your money in something at your choice".
Obviously you have to be cautious about who you do business with. But this is ultimately a good reason to avoid using US currency at all, or dealing with any major banks.
To me, sound like jumping from the fry pan into the fire. The govt is (theoretically) responsible for the good of its citizens, while for sure a corporate is only responsible (in a limited way, risks are always assumed in an investment) only to its stakeholders (not necessary its customers).
But who am I to object to the way you are dealing with your money?
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Obviously you have to be cautious about who you do business with. But this is ultimately a good reason to avoid using US currency at all, or dealing with any major banks.
But, I admit, a credit union sounds better to me than a major bank.
Uh, troll? (Score:2)
I can see that this comment has been buried, but not why. That must mean I was right! Thanks for the feedback, I shall promote alternative currencies more strongly until the day I die.
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Because you may finish in loosing everything you worked for because the alternative currency is abused by a corporate you cannot even vote out every 4 years.
You're right, it's even easier than voting every four years and crossing your fingers that a politician gives a damn (they don't). Here's what you do: Simply don't accept pay in that form.
Tada! You are not required to accept payment in anything other than legal tender, which a dollar is but virtual currency is not.
I find it funny that to prevent hypothetical virtual money shenanigans, you want to call in the US government to fix things up. Because, you know, those guys have such a great track recor
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It deals with these issues. And is an enjoyable read anyway - as you'd expect from Stross.
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If you haven't already read "Halting State" by Charlie Stross .
No, I didn't. Thanks for the reference, seems promising.
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If you haven't already read "Halting State" by Charlie Stross .
It deals with these issues. And is an enjoyable read anyway - as you'd expect from Stross.
It's also a rarity in that it's written in 2nd person form.
While that is not a problem per se, the jumps between personae make it rather jarring, as you spend the first few sentences of each subchapter guessing who the narrator is talking to.
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it's a good book despite the writing style rather than because of it.
Yes, that's really made me want to read it, thanks.
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Why? I was pointing out how currency is basically already virtual.
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The next boom/bust cycle will happen with virtual currency. Hope that nobody's retirement savings will be invested in the virtual world.
Yeah. That would be really bad if suddenly your money isn't worth anything anymore. I'm so glad that never happened up to now...
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The next boom/bust cycle will happen with virtual currency. Hope that nobody's retirement savings will be invested in the virtual world.
Yeah. That would be really bad if suddenly your money isn't worth anything anymore. I'm so glad that never happened up to now...
Unless you've actually, physically lived in a country where you worked all day to earn a wheelbarrow full of money and hoped that you'd be able to trade it for a loaf of bread in the morning... it hasn't. Not to you. Buying an overpriced house that you can't sell for more than 70% of what you paid for it is not at all the same.
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The next boom/bust cycle will happen with virtual currency. Hope that nobody's retirement savings will be invested in the virtual world.
I hope it's a boom, not a bust that comes next. Still hoping to recoup some of the money I invested in Flooz [wikipedia.org]!
My sister stole 13 million worth of my monopoly $ (Score:5, Insightful)
I was selling my physical monopooly currency to her for $100,000 for every 100 monopoly bucks. /.
Sadly my news article never earned quite as much attention as this when I submitted it to
I hope to one day throw her in prison, even tho she has admitted to damaging my business model my lawyer is skeptical of a positive outcome at trial.
Something about suing a minor looking bad to the jury.
explain (Score:2)
I can't relate your comment to the article or the insight score... but your comments are intriging... please explain
Re:explain (Score:5, Funny)
Rivalz and Zynga both sell an artificial currency (i.e. not 'legal tender' in any country) for 'real' money. Both have been the victims of a theft. If the thief in the Zynga case has been convicted then the implication is that there's now a precedent.
Rivalz' insight is that taking that precedent to its logical extreme, his sister's about to be forced to turn lesbian.
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It's funny, most of the stuff you have in your pocket is not that much different. You bring it to a bank and it just becomes a bunch of numbers on your credit account backed by nothing. Banks and the goverment basically play the same game, with the difference that they get away with it.
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Actually the key difference is that the stuff in my pocket is backed by a government which also enforces laws and regulates commerce. As such it is recognized by that government as having a specific market value and standing in legal proceedings also recognized as official by that government. If governments were to allow private currencies to have the saem legal standing then companies like Visa or Amex could print their own money and let markets decide which held value or not. It's not a completely craz
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The case is fair enough - it is the reporting that is rubbish. Which isn't really surprising; journalists tend to ignore the details when anything legal happens.
From what I can tell, he pleaded guilty to 4 charges under the CMA 1990; and 1 under the Proceeds of Crime Act (2003?).
I would imagine he was charged under section 1 [legislation.gov.uk] CMA which makes it an offence to cause "a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer" provided that one knows "the access
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My friend stole a few hundred trillion dollars from me the other day, as that's what I had valued my favourite pencil at had anyone wanted to purchase it from me.
The only difference between our situations and the ones in the article is that there are actual transactions taking place, right now, for such items. With so many of them going on, they have a bit of a competitive market, which forces them to be roughly equal in price. This means that, in practice, this virtual currency DOES have a value, as much a
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You reckon that's bad... (Score:1)
Re:You reckon that's bad... (Score:4, Funny)
...I'm currently looking at multiple life-sentences for committing mass-murder in (insert name of your favourite shoot-em-up).
Or when BFG-9000 are outlawed, only outlaws ...
Mint analogy (Score:2)
Judge Wassell asked if the case was any different from stealing notes from the Royal Mint. Mr Evans said in theory it was not because the mint could produce more but the thief would have something tangible he could use elsewhere.
This is interesting how artificially created scarcity [wikipedia.org] is being compared with actual scarcity. I am not an online game player who spends money on them, but seeing how easily poker chips are being sold in the black market by the chap, it seems to me that the poker chips one has is nothing more than a number written in a database field somewhere in the Zynga servers (unlike BitCoins [bitcoin.org]) and there is no more record of them than the database transaction logs. So, as I see it, people pay Zynga to in
Re:Mint analogy (Score:4, Informative)
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And yet M1 > M0. And of course M2 > M1 and M3 > M2...
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Currency does not have to be anything physical. (Score:2)
That's a common myth: gold-backed currency has "real value" and fiat currency has no "real value". The thing is: money serves as an exchange medium of value. Since the usefulness (or value) of gold (or just about anything else physical) depends on many factors, the only sane option is fiat.
Here is an example: how much of your work is one ounce of gold worth? The most certain amount could be construed by the work you would have to spend to mine and smelt it. Possibly as much as gold is worth to you
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It's not a "common myth", you're just ignoring what "real value" means in that context.
Can arbitrary amounts of the currency be created out of thin air? If so it has no "real value", if not it has "real value".
And yes, there's no need for a currency to have "real value" as long as people are willing to use as an exchange medium. A currency with nothing restricting its creation has a higher chance of people deciding not to be willing than one that does though.
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On the other hand, having "real value" is not nearly enough or sufficient for something to be useful as currency - say, both gasoline and iPads have 'real value'.
So, as currency doesn't imply 'real value', and 'real value' doesn't imply currency, they are orthogonal, mostly unrelated concepts, so it's not of much use to use them in the same sentence - money is money and that's it, and stuff with 'real value' is something completely different.
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> That's a common myth: gold-backed currency has "real value" and fiat currency has no "real value".
That's because people don't understand (hyper) inflation or what causes it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimbabwean_dollar [wikipedia.org]
> The thing is: money serves as an exchange medium of value.
Ok, you understand the first meaning of money ...
> Since the usefulness (or value) of gold (or just about anything else physical) depends on many factors, the only sane option is fiat.
... but not the 2nd or 3rd meaning.
W
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{Post got cut off}
Until we either have 1 global currancy, or people actually learn the 2nd and 3rd meaning of money, we will have this nonsense of poverty, inflation, and people arguing over multiple meanings of the SAME DOLLAR ammount.
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I am quite surprised that you are refuting my thesis by refering to a text that says exactly the same as me. Currency is not a means of storage of value or measure of value (I assume that those are the mysterious "2nd and 3rd meanings" you talk about). Storage of value is the same as having a defered exchange. For example: "I give you one pound of meat today for an iPod in a year" is the same as "I am selling you this meat for X simoleons and next year I buy an iPod for X simoleons". Measure of value is
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Most of money supply for major currencies (say, US dollars or Euro) is virtual - there aren't nearly as much physical cash banknotes as the money in circulation, as most of money is not issued by Federal reserve or central banks of other countries not by running a printing press, but by lending it in the electronic money transfer system.
If you somehow change a number in a database system holding your personal bank account in Bank of America or whatever other bank, there is no more record of it than the data
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Nah. Most dollars only exist as numbers in a database somewhere too. Sure, a small fraction exists as physical bills, but that's a tiny fraction.
Halting State (Score:1)
This remind me of "Halting State" by Charles Stross. Story starts with a bank robbery in a virtual game, with real business impact. Excellent novel.
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I'm curious (Score:5, Interesting)
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I suppose that the "exchanged for cash" bit of my post was missed, right? What I'm curious about is this: There is a site that lets you play a game and win/lose in credits (which you pay money for). If these credits can be exchanged for cash directly, then the site is no different from online casinos. If, otoh, these credits only have value on the site (say, 1000 credits gets you a teddy bear + postage, or something similar), then they bypass laws and licenses which govern actual casinos.
Perhaps my origina
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Otherwise you could just create an on-line site and allow people to exchange thier in-game money for anything where the casino would purchase it for you.
As for thier chips they hold no real world value except that other people want them to play poker with so you can sell them for cheaper then what Zynga sells them for an get real world money that way.
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They would be the same since the laws dealing with online casinos giving out cash also cover it by including products or anything of value. Otherwise you could just create an on-line site and allow people to exchange thier in-game money for anything where the casino would purchase it for you.
Actually this is not true in the US. It varies wildly from state to state. Gambling laws are not federal and in many states gambling for prizes is perfectly legal where as gambling for money is not. You see charity poker tournaments that give out prizes in many locations precisely because of this. In other places it's ok to gamble in private places but only if the house doesn't take a rake and all participants have an equal chance of winning. In other places it's ok to gamble up to certain monetary limits.
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Zynga are even bigger crooks (Score:2)
Well I think that it's ironic, considering that Zynga steal from everyone else.
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I believe that GP is referring to Zynga shamelessly making blatant copies of other people's games. Then, on top of that, using their already-established base of players to build up a userbase for the new game (e.g. "Molly's building a new burlesque house in WhoreVille and needs 5 silk stockings! Go play our new game Sweat Shop Hero to make some stockings for her!")
--Jeremy
Ban alternante currancies (Score:2)
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You seem to have misspelled "tax heavily" there. Because if there's one thing any congressman who actually wants to balance the budget needs, it's something new that they can get tax money from.
Its virtual, does not count (Score:1)
I thought I read the heading as real chips were stolen then being sold, but now that I see they are just virtual chips...I imagin you can just trace them back and delete them and start over.
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Not entirely clear on what the courts should do... (Score:2)
Evans admitted that valuing virtual currency can be difficult and that the company was not actually deprived of tangible goods, but he said that the theft could still affect the developer by indirectly causing legitimate online gamers to stop playing Zynga Poker or its other games.
Rob
Bet the judge will have a field day (Score:2)
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If anything this should make for an interesting trial.
Not really, because the defendant pleaded guilty.
Been done before, but not illegally? (Score:2)
How is this really any different from, say, exploiting a dupe bug in a MMOG? That sort of thing has been done before, but most people would consider being banned from the game to be an appropriate punishment. Why does this case escalate to the level of criminal charges of fraud?
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He broke the law by "hacking" their computer system. And then when he sold the results of that he's now converting criminal property and hence gets done for that too.
Exploiting a dupe bug in an MMO and sell the resulting items is different because you haven't committed the initial criminal act and hence the sale isn't converting criminal property and so neither charge can apply. If you hacked into the WoW database server and gave yourself items that way, then it would be the same situation and you'd have so
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Assuming he hacked/cracked into their servers (and TFA certainly implies it), that's a crime under the Computer Misuse Act here in the UK so he can potentially do gaol time just for that.
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It's very simple - just the same as cracking any other system to get some service for free that's usually sold for $x.
Unauthorised acccess / cracking of computer systems with direct losses = crime.
Reselling the service (chip counters in a virtual poker game) for financial gain = aggravating circumstances.
If you defrauded a $1000 per haircut hairdresser into giving his services w/o paying, the court will bill you $1000 - nobody cares how valuable the service is in your mind.
Regarding your example with dupe
At the risk of sounding like an elitist... (Score:2)
"but he said that the theft could still affect the developer by indirectly causing legitimate online gamers to stop playing Zynga Poker or its other games."
Zynga never had any legitimate online gamers.
And nothing of value was lost... (Score:2)
You say that as if you think that's a BAD thing!