• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.585-600
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• 2012

Security issues in online games are increasing as the online game industry grows. Real money trading (RMT) by online game users has become a security issue in several countries including Korea because RMT is related to criminal activities such as money laundering or tax evasion. RMT-related activities are done by professional work forces, namely gold-farmers, and many of them employ the automated program, bot, to gain cyber asset in a quick and efficient way. Online game companies try to prevent the activities of gold-farmers using game bots detection algorithm and block their accounts or IP addresses. However, game bot detection algorithm can detect a part of gold-farmer's network and IP address blocking also can be detoured easily by using the virtual private server or IP spoofing. In this paper, we propose a method to detect gold-farmer groups by analyzing their connection patterns to the online game servers, particularly information on their routing and source locations. We verified that the proposed method can reveal gold-farmers' group effectively by analyzing real data from the famous MMORPG.

• The Journal of Industrial Distribution & Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.63-72
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• 2018

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of online game properties, social interaction, and player satisfaction on intention to online games in Chinese gamers. Research design, data, and methodology - This study is an empirical analysis assuming that properties of online games, social interaction and satisfaction will induce Chinese gamers' intention to play online games. We set the relationship between the six variables as follows. First, the properties of online games, exogenous variables, were identified by three factors: entertainment, security, participation and challenge. Second, we had input social interaction among gamers as another exogenous variables. Third, the gamer's satisfaction of online games was added to the research model as a mediating variable between exogenous variables and endogenous variables. Finally, gamer's intention to play influenced by satisfaction and social interaction was used as final endogenous variable. The data used for the empirical analysis were collected through questionnaires for Chinese under age 35 who enjoy the online games. The data used in the research were finally extracted from 195 questionnaires. The collected data were tested through the analysis of the measurement model (Step 1) and the analysis of the structural model (Step 2). The covariance structure equation model (SEM) was used for the analysis. The measurement model and structural model were evaluated by the maximum likelihood method. Results - The results of the empirical analysis are as follows. The satisfaction of online games were entertainment and security had a significant effect to satisfaction; but participation and challenge and social interaction had no significant effect on satisfaction. The social interaction among gamers and the satisfaction with online games have a significant influence on the intention to play online games. As a result, the attributes of the game were affecting the intention to play the game after satisfaction. Social interaction influenced the intention to play online games rather than satisfaction itself. Conclusions - This study provide some practical implications for the new companies who want to enter the online game industry and seek to competitiveness in China, and provide theoretical implications on the role of interaction among gamers in the study of online games.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.101-117
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• 2013

As the number of online game user has been rapidly increased thanks to the recent vitalization of online contents market, not only new business opportunity but also the opportunity to create high profits have been provided as well. However, the increase of the number of online game user and the rapid expansion of the market evoke a cutthroat completion among online game service providers, and also high barriers to entry to online game market have been erected. Thus, what kinds of efforts need for the business success and sales increase in online game market? In lots of researches regarding online contents business, the deepening of loyalty was considered as a critical factor for the business success. According to the study on user's behavior in online environment, users would experience the Flow while using online service, and then, if they were in state of the Flow, they would use the service constantly. High customer loyalty to online game means high will to use the online game too. The purpose of this research was i) to examine what factors enable users to be naturally immersed in online game while playing it, ii) to examine what properties of online game can make game more interesting and exciting, iii) to verify that such factors are critical in deepening customer loyalty, and iv) to suggest some essential factors to be fun and exciting games, on where the focus should be put, and the directionality for the development for sales expansion of online game developer or online game service provider. The research results are as below: First, the involvement and the perceived quality which were characteristics of brand appeared to be factors most affecting Flow. This shows that once game user get interested in online game that user has played frequently, even though new games are released, user will continuously flow the game not moving to new games, and also shows that users not only get more interested but also put more trust in games in the site to where users are frequently going than games in other sites, and consequently user can increasingly flow the game. Second, the compensation and graphics which are the characteristics of contents appeared to be factors affecting Flow. Proper compensation which is given to game users triggers fun and interests in game and makes them flow more and more. And graphics make users to feel game space as if real space and let them flow in game with more reality. Third, challenges, support, and the stability which are technical characteristics appeared to be factors affecting Flow. Challenges enable users to not only experience new virtual world but also solve various difficulties and obstacles. Once users feel fun and interests through this challenge, they can naturally flow games. In addition, the stability of network provides reliability in security and hacking. By doing so, it can induce users to flow more and more. Lastly, when aforementioned characteristics including contents characteristics, technical characteristics, and brand characteristics are organically combined each other, game users feel fun and total minutes are naturally increased, so that game users experience Flow, and consequently the customer loyalty will be deepened as well.

• Journal of Korea Game Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.51-60
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• 2016

The incidents of massive personal information being leaked are occurring continuously over recent years. Personal information leaked outside is used for an illegal use of other's name and account theft. Especially it is happening on online games whose virtual goods, online game money and game items can be exchanged with real cash. When we research the real identity theft cases that happened in an online game, we can see that they happen massively in a short time. In this study, we define the characteristics of the mass attacks of the automated identity theft cases that occur in online games. Also we suggest a system to detect and prevent identity theft attacks in real time.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1361-1376
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• 2015

Recently, the size of the mobile game market and the number of mobile game users are growing. Also, as the mobile game's life cycle is increasing at the same time, auto program issue reappears which has been appeared in PC online games. Gamers usually tend to ignore warning messages from antivirus programs and even worse they delete antivirus program to execute auto programs. Therefore, mobile game users are easily compromised if the auto program performs malicious behaviors not only for the original features. In this paper, we analyze whether seven auto programs of "clash of clans" which has a lot more users for a long time perform malicious behaviors or not. We forecast the possible security threats in near future and proposed countermeasures based on this analysis. By analyzing auto programs of highly popular mobile game of today, we can acquire the knowledge on auto program's recent trend such as their development platform, operating mode, etc. This analysis will help security analysts predict auto program's evolving trends and block potential threats in advance.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.422-427
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• 2010

Korean Game industry, especially MMORPG(Massively Multiplayer Online Game) has been rapidly expanding in these days. But As game industry is growing, lots of online game security incidents have also been increasing and getting prevailing. One of the most critical security incidents is 'Game Bots', which are programs to play MMORPG instead of human players. If player let the game bots play for them, they can get a lot of benefic game elements (experience points, items, etc.) without any effort, and it is considered unfair to other players. Plenty of game companies try to prevent bots, but it does not work well. In this paper, we propose a behavior pattern model for detecting bots. We analyzed behaviors of human players as well as bots and identified six game features to build the model to differentiate game bots from human players. Based on these features, we made a Naive Bayesian classifier to reasoning the game bot or not. To evaluated our method, we used 10 game bot data and 6 human Player data. As a result, we classify Game bot and human player with 88% accuracy.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.141-151
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• 2021

Several methods exist for detecting hacking programs operating within online games. However, a significant amount of computational power is required to detect the illegal access of a hacking program in game clients. In this study, we propose a novel detection method that analyzes the protected memory area and the hacking program's process in real time. Our proposed method is composed of a three-step process: the collection of information from each PC, separation of the collected information according to OS and version, and analysis of the separated memory information. As a result, we successfully detect malicious injected dynamic link libraries in the normal memory space.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.1123-1129
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• 2015

Macro(automatic hunting) of mobile game is a program that touch the screen by defined rules like a game bot in PC online games, and it is used by make various ways like android application or windows application program. This gives honest users deprivation and make to lose their interest. Finally they would leave the game and gradually game life would be shorten. Although many studies to prevent these problems in PC online game are conducted, applying mobile game to PC's way is difficult because mobile games are limited to use the network and device performance is different with PC. In this paper, we propose a framework for macro detection by using the touch event information. A touch event on the mobile game is a necessary control command to the game. Because macro touches the screen with the same pattern, there is a difference between normal user's behavior and macro's operation. In mobile games that casual games are mostly, Touch event is the best difference that identify normal user against macro for a short period of time. As a result of detecting macros used in real mobile game by using the proposed framework it showed 100% accuracy and 0% false positive rate.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.1465-1475
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• 2015

Cheating detection models in the online games can be divided into two parts. The one is on client based model, which is designed to detect malicious programs not to be run while playing the games. The other one is server based model, which distinguishes the difference between benign users and cheaters by the server log analysis. The client based model provides various features to prevent games from cheating, For instance, Anti-reversing, memory manipulation and so on. However, being deployed and operated on the client side is a huge weak point as cheaters can analyze and bypass the detection features. That Is why the server based model is an emerging way to detect cheating users in online games. But the simple log data such as FPS's one can be hard to find validate difference between two of them. In this paper, In order to compensate for the disadvantages of the two detection model above, We use the existing game security solution log as well as the server one to bring high performance as well as detection ratio compared to the existing detection models in the market.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.1-6
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• 2022

Teaching and learning are one of the major issues during this pandemic (COVID-19). Since the pandemic started, there are many changes in teaching and learning styles as everything related to studies started online. Game-Based Learning has got remarkable importance in the educational system and pedagogy as an effective way of increasing student inspiration and engagement. In this field, most of the work has been carried out in digital games. This research uses an Animated Game-Based Learning design in enhancing student engagement and perception of learning. In teaching Computer Science (CS) concepts in higher education, to enhance the pedagogy activities in CS concepts, more specifically the concepts of "Data Structures (DS)" i.e., Array, Stack, and Queue concepts are focused. This study aims to observe the difference in students' learning with the use of different learning methods i.e., the traditional learning (TL) method and the Animated Game-Based Learning (AGBL) Method. The experimental results show that learning DS concepts has been improved by the AGBL method as compared to the TL method.