Osama bin Tauren?Follow

I'm not sure which is more amusing. Your tax dolars funded this, or the fact that its basically a justification for secret agents to play MMO's on the job.

If anything is a terror plot, they should be looking at the FFXI Devs...

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/world-of-warcra.html

Pentagon Researcher Unveils Warcraft Terror Plot
By Noah Shachtman September 15, 2008 | 7:22:00 PMCategories: Cloak and Dagger, T is for Terror, Terror Tech, Training and Sims

The American military and intelligence communities are increasingly worried that would-be bin Ladens might gather in a virtual world, to plan a real-life attack. But the spies haven't given many details, about how it might be done. Now, a Pentagon researcher has laid out how such a terror plot might unfold. The planning ground is World of Warcraft. The main target of this possibly nuclear strike: the White House.

There's been no public proof to date of terrorists hatching plots in virtual worlds. But online spaces like World of Warcraft are making some spooks, generals and Congressmen extremely nervous. They imagine terrorists rehearsing attacks in these worlds, just like the U.S. military trains with commercial shoot-em-up games. They worry that the massively multiplayer games make it incredibly easy to gather plotters from around the world. But, mostly, virtual worlds are nerve-wracking to spies because they're so hard to monitor. The accounts are pseudonymous. The access is global. The jargon is thick. And most of the spy agencies' employees aren't exactly level-70 shamans.

In a presentation late last week at the Director of National Intelligence Open Source Conference in Washington, Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the Pentagon-funded National Defense University, gave a bit of a primer on virtual worlds to an audience largely ignorant about what happens in these online spaces. Then he launched into a scenario, to demonstrate how a meatspace plot might be hidden by in-game chatter.

In it, two World of Warcraft players discuss a raid on the "White Keep" inside the "Stonetalon Mountains." The major objective is to set off a "Dragon Fire spell" inside, and make off with "110 Gold and 234 Silver" in treasure. "No one will dance there for a hundred years after this spell is cast," one player, "war_monger," crows.

Except, in this case, the White Keep is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "Dragon Fire" is an unconventional weapon. And "110 Gold and 234 Silver" tells the plotters how to align the game's map with one of Washington, D.C.

The fictional plot was originally developed by Dan Arey, for the Director of National Intelligence's Summer Hard Problems workshop, or SHARP. And its details are a little fuzzy. The terminology doesn't match World of Warcraft lingo, all that precisely. There is no "White Keep" in World of Warcraft; "Dragon Fire" is a spell in EverQuest, the old-school role-playing game, not WoW. But the banter is reminiscent enough of World of Warcraft talk, to give outsiders an idea of how such a conversation might go down -- and how hard it would be to identify.

Steven Aftergood, the Federation of the American Scientists analyst who's been following the intelligence community for years, wonders how realistic these sorts of scenarios are, really. "This concern is out there. But it has to be viewed in context. It's the job of intelligence agencies to anticipate threats and counter them. With that orientation, they're always going to give more weight to a particular scenario than an objective analysis would allow," he tells Danger Room. "Could terrorists use Second Life? Sure, they can use anything. But is it a significant augmentation? That's not obvious. It's a scenario that an intelligence officer is duty-bound to consider. That's all."

Toavs, for one, believes that spies will have to spend more time in virtual worlds like WoW, if they want to have a hope of keeping tabs on what goes on inside 'em. Which means, some day soon, we might find secret agents in World of Warcraft, along with the druids and orcs and night elves.

They should meet in Vanguard. No one would ever look for them there.

Also, they could ride camels.

The British armed forces are banned from playing any MMO.

As you can tell I take alot of notice of said ban.

What's the reason for the rule?

I've always suspected Nephthys.

Security allegedly. When I asked what they ment, I was told don't ask, and if we catch you playing one you're in trouble.

When I did get to the bottom of it I found out it was due to lack of monitoring, and also encompassed the use of websites with forums and chat programmes like Skype, be it home use or at work.

I figured there was zero chance of them getting any charge to stick so i ignored it.

I smiled, nodded and continued ignoring the rule, as did all my fellow MMO matelots. The way it was put across was a total ban in the same way there is a total ban on travel to certain destinations without permission.

Well, yes, I agree, but by issuing a rule no one is going to follow, instead of giving concrete advice that anyone can follow I think they are not doing themselves any favors.

This reminds me of the scene in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas at the drug seminar during the Sheriffs convention.

Or the RMT would steal their accounts and the terrorists would be busy trying to get SE to do a rollback.