Edward Snowden, who has become notorious for leaking information on the antics of the NSA, has leaked documents dating back to 2008, which show that both American and British intelligence agencies have “infiltrated” online games such as World of Warcraft.
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According to these documents, spies from both nation’s agencies created characters in order to snoop on gamers in a bid to discover if terrorists were blending in with legitimate players and using the anonymity in order to plan attacks or communicate with fellow terrorists and even arrange for payment transfers.These spies have been reported to have been active in the game Second Life, with a “deconfliction” group being set up in order to prevent the agents from spying on each other.
The agencies also used open-source packet-sniffing software along with parsing scripts supplied by the Uk’s GCHQ, to analyze the data. “These logs are now being forwarded to GCHQ for additional analysis, target development, and network knowledge enrichment,” reads the leaked document.
It seems that this snooping has reaped results for the agencies as the document notes that the GCHQ was able to uncover potential Signals Intelligence by “identifying accounts, characters, and guilds related to Islamic extremist groups, nuclear proliferation, and arms dealing.”
As well as that the agency has also “successfully been able to get the discussions between different game players on Xbox Live.”
Although these documents are now five years old, it is not known if the agencies still have access to any of these networks.
SOURCE: Theverge
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