Quotulatiousness

August 7, 2011

Trawling a virtual economy to support a non-viable “real” economy

Filed under: Asia, Economics, Gaming, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:47

Give North Korea some credit for finding a viable source of revenue:

What’s a dictator to do when his third-world economy is wheezing along on its last legs? Hack some video games, of course! According to a report in the New York Times, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il unleashed an army of young computer crackers on popular South Korean online gaming portals to find ways to make quick cash.

South Korean authorities claim that a squad of approximately 30 hackers operated from a base in China and were given the mission of breaching online gaming servers (including those of the immensely popular Lineage) to set up bot factories and automated farming collectives. The digital booty was then sold to gamers for a reported $6 million over two years.

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