• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.293-308
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• 2011

The preliminary security assessment is an information security process to analyze security weaknesses before beginning of services. Discovering security weakness through preliminary security assessment is highly required because it costs much when security incident occur in the middle of service operation. However, this assessment is not widely spread in the online game service domain yet. In this paper, we summarize the security risk existed in the online game service, and we classify the security requirements related to the each risk. Also, through the case study, we evaluated the effectiveness of preliminary security assessment in this domain. In addition, we suggest checklists that should be reviewed once in game-client side, network-side and game-server side for the purpose of security enhancement.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.1067-1075
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• 2015

With the recent increase of the number of mobile game users, the side effects such as the manipulation of game points, levels and game speed and payment fraud are emerging. Especially, the emulators which make it possible for mobile applications to run on PC is a great threat to mobile game security since debugging specific game application or automating the game playing can be done easier with them. Therefore, we research the efficient ways to detect widely used Android Emulators such as BlueStacks, GenyMotion, Andy, YouWave and ARC Welder from the perspective of client(app), game server and network to reduce threat to mobile game security.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.1097-1114
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• 2015

As the online game market grows, illegal activities such as cheating play using game bots or game hack programs, running private servers, hacking game companies' system and network, and account theft are also increasing. There are various security measures for online games to prevent illegal activities. However, the current security measures are not enough to prevent all highly evolving game attacks and frauds. Some security measure can do harm game players usability, game companies need to develop usable security measure that is well fit to game genre and contents design. In this study, we surveyed the recent trend of various security measure applied in online games. This research also classified illegal activities and their related countermeasure for detection and prevention.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.83-98
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• 2007

This study focused on online game security, which has been considered relatively insignificant when compared to the online game industry's rapid growth. In this study, the state of security incidents in the Korean game industry and security solutions for such cases were examined. At first the security incidents were classified according to the type of game security infringement. Based upon this classification, this study analyzed the causes that give rise to infringement of online game security, and developed technical solutions for such cases. Finally, this study verified whether or not these technical solutions could be applied to online game sites.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.235-255
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• 2019

Recent technological advances and industry changes, the game industry is maximizing fun by supporting cross-play that can be enjoyed by different platform users in PC, Mobile and Console games. If the boundaries are lost through the cross play, unexpected security threats can occur due to new services, even if existing security is maintained above a certain level. The existing online game security researches are mostly fraud detection that can occur in PC and mobile environment, but it is also necessary to study the security of the console game as cross play becomes possible. Therefore, this paper systematically identifies the security threats that can occur when enjoying cross play against console game users using STRIDE and LINDDUN threat modeling, derives security requirements using the international common evaluation standard.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.2414-2428
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• 2018

In order to solve the problem that the current network security situation assessment methods just focus on the attack behaviors, this paper proposes a kind of network security situation assessment method based on Markov Decision Process and Game theory. The method takes the Markov Game model as the core, and uses the 4 levels data fusion to realize the evaluation of the network security situation. In this process, the Nash equilibrium point of the game is used to determine the impact on the network security. Experiments show that the results of this method are basically consistent with the expert evaluation data. As the method takes full account of the interaction between the attackers and defenders, it is closer to reality, and can accurately assess network security situation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.627-637
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• 2015

As game item trading becomes more popular with the rapid growth of online game market, the market for trading game items by cash has increased up to KRW 1.6 trillion. Thanks to this active market, it has been easy to turn these items and game money into real money. As a result, some malicious users have often attempted to steal other players' rare and valuable game items by using their account. Therefore, this study proposes a detection model through analysis on these account thieves' behavior in the Massive Multiuser Online Role Playing Game(MMORPG). In case of online game identity theft, the thieves engage in economic activities only with a goal of stealing game items and game money. In this pattern are found particular sequences such as item production, item sales and acquisition of game money. Based on this pattern, this study proposes a detection model. This detection model-based classification revealed 86 percent of accuracy. In addition, trading patterns when online game identity was stolen were analyzed in this study.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.6 no.11
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• pp.2866-2879
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• 2012

Among the various security threats in online games, the use of game bots is the most serious problem. Previous studies on game bot detection have proposed many methods to find out discriminable behaviors of bots from humans based on the fact that a bot's playing pattern is different from that of a human. In this paper, we look at the chatting data that reflects gamers' communication patterns and propose a communication pattern analysis framework for online game bot detection. In massive multi-user online role playing games (MMORPGs), game bots use chatting message in a different way from normal users. We derive four features; a network feature, a descriptive feature, a diversity feature and a text feature. To measure the diversity of communication patterns, we propose lightly summarized indices, which are computationally inexpensive and intuitive. For text features, we derive lexical, syntactic and semantic features from chatting contents using text mining techniques. To build the learning model for game bot detection, we test and compare three classification models: the random forest, logistic regression and lazy learning. We apply the proposed framework to AION operated by NCsoft, a leading online game company in Korea. As a result of our experiments, we found that the random forest outperforms the logistic regression and lazy learning. The model that employs the entire feature sets gives the highest performance with a precision value of 0.893 and a recall value of 0.965.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.1297-1307
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• 2018

The rise of Online game ESD(Electronic Software Distribution) like Steam, the method of game piracy are more diversified. In Online Game ESD, Software DRM is applied to game because we have to play in offline situation, but it is easily bypassed due to low security level. In this study, we analyze crack files of pirated games to learn how to bypass Steam DRM and to establish countermeasures for based on API call birthmark. The generated birthmark showed more than 85% resilience in representing crack groups and 95% credibility in detecting cracked games. With this study, it is possible to enhance the security of the online game Electronic Software Distribution platform, and to provide a high level of game piracy protection for indie game developers, especially those who can not purchase Third Party DRM to protect their own games.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.225-238
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• 2012

Among the various security threats in online games, the use of game bots is the most serious problem. In this paper, we propose a framework for user behavior analysis for bot detection in online games. Specifically, we focus on party play that reflects the social activities of gamers: In a Massively Multi-user Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), party play log includes a distinguished information that can classify game users under normal-user and abnormal-user. That is because the bot users' main activities target on the acquisition of cyber assets. Through a statistical analysis of user behaviors in game activity logs, we establish the threshold levels of the activities that allow us to identify game bots. Also, we build a knowledge base of detection rules based on this statistical analysis. We apply these rule reasoner to the sixth most popular online game in the world. As a result, we can detect game bot users with a high accuracy rate of 95.92%.