Attacks on tomorrow’s virtual world

The gaming industry is booming, as is the size of its market, which has seen a growth surge. This increase goes hand in hand with the growing popularity of online games, including massively multiplayer ones, a trend that is continuing and is expected to grow even more in the coming years. These gaming environments lay the foundations of what is likely to be tomorrow’s Metaverse. Whatever systemic flaws or vulnerabilities they have will most likely be carried over, if not addressed properly now. Inspired by a class of attacks that disrupt the game synchronization between players, we propose a thought-provoking reflection, claiming that these issues cannot be addressed by the classical body of knowledge in dependable or secure distributed systems. We offer ideas for research plans to move forward, using the games as a concrete experimentation platform but keeping in mind the broader impact of these issues.