Cybersecurity lurking over Metaverse

We are entering into another new age technology for digital exploration through metaverse, a concept that is gaining heavy traction. Assuming widespread adoption, with this people can connect online in enhanced ways, it opens up new attack surfaces for cybercriminals. Now major technology companies are reinventing the challenges associated to secure the metaverse and how cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the metaverse compare to those encountered by current internet users.

Facebook plays a large role in connecting people online, but the concept of a metaverse goes far beyond a Facebook group or Facetime call. The metaverse enables companies to create “digital twins” that can use data and algorithms to influence decisions made by executives in real life. The metaverse is defined as a digital world that combines virtual and augmented reality. Individuals will navigate this online world – which can be identical to the real world or based on imagination, or some combination of both – by using digital avatars.

Digital avatars and virtual reality headsets give a deeper glimpse into users’ real lives than anything that could have been expressed in social media. The intimate nature of the metaverse and the data it creates will provide ample opportunities for cybercriminals.

Some of the cybersecurity challenges with this new tech will be similar to what we are already familiar with on the internet. The continued rise of cybercrime has revealed just how lucrative it can be to hack into a company or an individual’s online accounts. However, along with the normal phishing, malware, and hacking we are familiar with, the metaverse will likely bring entirely new cybercrimes because of its infrastructure.

The metaverse platform can also be a vulnerable digital ecosystem—where privacy issues, data breaches, and security risks could lurk behind its virtual spaces. Risk always happens when integration between these key components is not well-thought out and security gaps and seams are exposed for threat actors to exploit. The closed and complex nature of the Metaverse’s hardware ecosystem could lend itself to Zero-day vulnerabilities creating for a loophole that hackers could exploit.

The metaverse is heavily centered on the use of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTS), which can be attractive targets for cybercriminals for a variety of reasons. The risk of identity management and commerce in the metaverse, and how NFTs, Blockchain and cryptocurrency validate transactions and identities between parties is a question. With anonymity being a key characteristic of the metaverse, detecting fraudsters, ransomware criminals, fake identities, or crypto thieves could also become a big challenge in the real world.

Finally, technology holds a great promise and like always, there will always be early adopters for the same. However, there is a risk, just like with anything new, with this tech slavery individuals and enterprises keep pumping money to explore digital/virtual funds, which is not true in the real world, simply imaginary.