Exploring the Metaverse
February 9, 2022In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Facebook company was re-branding as Meta, folding all of the social media conglomerate’s brands into one new organization.
“Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses,” stated the company’s press release.
But what, exactly, is the metaverse?
“An evolution of the internet, it’s often described as online spaces where people can socialize, work and play as avatars,” explain Andrew Morse and Scott Stein for CNET. “Those spaces are shared and always available; they don't disappear when you've finished using them, like a Zoom call.”
Looking to the future, companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Apple, envision a virtual world that mirror our real, corporeal lives through the use of virtual reality (VR) and mixed/augmented reality (AR) headsets and other technologies.
What the metaverse will look like is still up to debate. Morse and Stein list Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft as examples of existing simpler versions of the metaverse, with the ultimate goal being a fully immersive digital world.
“It will be a bit of gaming, some Zoom telepresence, splashes of VR and AR, and plenty of social media,” say Morse and Stein.
Though it may sound like fun, living in a digital world, there are some concerns from experts that the cybersecurity concerns we face in real life will create new problems in the metaverse.
“Cybercriminals have always been quick to spot opportunity in new or of-the-moment technologies such as collaboration tools and virtual private networks,” writes Jessica Lyons Hardcastle for SDxCentral.
As the latest and greatest in technology, the metaverse serves as that new opportunity for hackers to exploit.
In her article, Hardcastle shares the views of Nick Biasini, Head of Outreach for Cisco Talos, one of the world’s largest threat intelligence teams. Biasini noted that shared virtual reality spaces, such as auction houses for nonfungible tokens (NFTs), are targets for cybercriminals. This is due to the low level of regulation and potential legal recourse for victims.
Talos Technical Leader Jaeson Schultz reports seeing more fake NFTs being bought and sold due to the nature of the trading, which requires an Ethereum wallet and smart contracts. This exponentially increases the likelihood of a cybersecurity breach, as previously discussed on the Capitology blog.
The question becomes how do you secure something as complex and dependent on a wide variety of technologies such as the metaverse? Or even more challenging, multiple metaverses?
“While regulation and laws pertaining to cryptocurrencies are part of the solution, neither present an immediate fix,” shares Hardcastle.
Both Biasini and Schultz recommend that companies are more involved in setting and enforcing standards of conduct and look toward implementing additional layers of validation. And above all to consider security from the start rather than waiting for the worst to occur.
“First, it’s let’s implement some cool features,” Schultz said. “And unfortunately, security is bolted on afterwards. I think we have a real opportunity here to hopefully integrate more security into this.”
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