K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
With implementation of the metaverse meaning ever-increasing amounts of connected technology, there are many technological challenges still to overcome
Metaverse implementations will require a huge quantity of data from motion and environmental sensors to track the human participants, and similarly a large number and variety of actuators, transducers and display screens to provide physical (e.g. haptic), audio and visual feedback to users.
Just like other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, every one of these sensor and feedback devices will be connected, almost all wirelessly, to the control systems for the Metaverse, which will almost certainly be based in the cloud.
All of these cloud connections present a huge potential attack surface that a bad actor could use to leverage vulnerabilities and potentially take control of the Metaverse. Would you want to enter a Metaverse that might have been hacked? While it would quite inconvenient if a fleet of smart home light switches were hacked, and got used to initiate a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, or were simply turned on and off when they shouldn’t be, the consequences would be much worse, potentially fatal, if a fleet of Metaverse sensors and actuators were compromised.
Technical challenges to overcome to realise potential of the metaverse
There are many technological challenges that must be overcome before the vision of ubiquitous Metaverses can be realised, as we have seen in the Ready Player One series of books and movies, but the need for absolute security of all the required physical devices probably may not be the top priority of Metaverse developers today. This is a mistake. Users are going to be reluctant to enter a Metaverse if they have concerns about their personal safety. The first inevitable hack of an early, and not fully secured, Metaverse implementation will certainly be widely publicised, fueling such concerns. Unfortunately, security isn’t something that can be bolted on as an afterthought. Security needs to be part of the design specifications for hardware and especially software from day 1. In particular, software needs to be updatable, because the latest software is always going to be the most secure. It is inevitable over time that critical vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) will be identified in any software (usually the reason why we have software updates pushed to our phones seemingly every month).
It is essential that these CVEs are fixed as soon as possible before they become exploited by bad actors. Fixing CVEs requires updating the software for the devices, first in the lab, and then deploying the updated software to the device fleets in the field. Most IoT devices are built using some form of open source software, such as Linux. This has many benefits, including the power of the open source community to quickly address bugs and CVEs as they are identified.
Continue reading: https://technologymagazine.com/articles/technological-challenges-to-security-of-the-metaverse
Metaverse implementations will require a huge quantity of data from motion and environmental sensors to track the human participants, and similarly a large number and variety of actuators, transducers and display screens to provide physical (e.g. haptic), audio and visual feedback to users.
Just like other Internet of Things (IoT) devices, every one of these sensor and feedback devices will be connected, almost all wirelessly, to the control systems for the Metaverse, which will almost certainly be based in the cloud.
All of these cloud connections present a huge potential attack surface that a bad actor could use to leverage vulnerabilities and potentially take control of the Metaverse. Would you want to enter a Metaverse that might have been hacked? While it would quite inconvenient if a fleet of smart home light switches were hacked, and got used to initiate a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, or were simply turned on and off when they shouldn’t be, the consequences would be much worse, potentially fatal, if a fleet of Metaverse sensors and actuators were compromised.
Technical challenges to overcome to realise potential of the metaverse
There are many technological challenges that must be overcome before the vision of ubiquitous Metaverses can be realised, as we have seen in the Ready Player One series of books and movies, but the need for absolute security of all the required physical devices probably may not be the top priority of Metaverse developers today. This is a mistake. Users are going to be reluctant to enter a Metaverse if they have concerns about their personal safety. The first inevitable hack of an early, and not fully secured, Metaverse implementation will certainly be widely publicised, fueling such concerns. Unfortunately, security isn’t something that can be bolted on as an afterthought. Security needs to be part of the design specifications for hardware and especially software from day 1. In particular, software needs to be updatable, because the latest software is always going to be the most secure. It is inevitable over time that critical vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs) will be identified in any software (usually the reason why we have software updates pushed to our phones seemingly every month).
It is essential that these CVEs are fixed as soon as possible before they become exploited by bad actors. Fixing CVEs requires updating the software for the devices, first in the lab, and then deploying the updated software to the device fleets in the field. Most IoT devices are built using some form of open source software, such as Linux. This has many benefits, including the power of the open source community to quickly address bugs and CVEs as they are identified.
Continue reading: https://technologymagazine.com/articles/technological-challenges-to-security-of-the-metaverse
