A digital virus spread by terrorists left bodies on the streets and cities quarantined by the government.
As mentioned at SecurityFocus, among other places, Blizzard's hugely popular World of Warcraft MMORPG was hit by an unexpected viral plague. A new gameplay area was introduced that could inflict a contagious plague onto players. However, game designers did not anticipate the rapid travel of the plague throughout the whole game universe -- potentially tens of thousands of players on each "realm", or server world. Whether intentional or accidental, soon thousands of lower-level players were unable to keep from dying as the plague ran rampant through city streets.
The affliction bears a striking resemblance to computer viruses and their spread throughout the world's networked computers.
For me, it was gratifying enough to read the article and note the following:
The complex epidemic that ensued after adding simple self-propagation to a feature of the game should come as no surprise, said Brian Martin, an independent security consultant who plays World of Warcraft.
It probably also comes as no surprise that security experts everywhere are, in fact, playing World of Warcraft.
