Application Security Essay -- Technology, Programming, Video Games

According to [3], game design refers to â€Å"something to program about.† When creating games, one must take into account the flow and structure of a game. These cannot be ignored since a domino effect follows: poor design will lead to a poor implementation of the game. A poorly implemented design would then lead to a program that is vulnerable to both simple and complex attacks. [1] mentions that loopholes or bugs in games may occur as a product of poor game design. This brings another point: poor design can lead to exploits. Bugs (in games) are more often than not exploited in order to gain some sort of virtual good or advantage, rather than being reported to the developer for further improvement. [1] also discusses different forms of cheating, some of which can be attributed to a poor design. These forms of cheating may include (as an example, for online games) hacking a server or database to gain an advantage, or hacking a system itself to extract valuable information, a mong many others. With respect to offline games, [4] describes an exploit which could affect others’ game play. Theoretically, one would assume that offline games would not affect others’ game play since, there are no networks or servers or connections to the internet, unlike online games. However, for offline games, it is possible for two users to share the same system, and therefore share the same game but with a difference in the saved game file though. The sum of it all is that a game developer’s poor design could be a â€Å"portal† for exploitation. There are ways though to improve design. One may review the design over and over again, from all perspectives, to ensure that there are as minimal â€Å"flaws† as there can be, since these flaws cannot totally be eradicat... ...VA, programmers must take into account the access modifiers of their classes. Preferably, programmers must make class’ attributes private and make use of getters and setters [9]. Use the protected access modifier for superclasses so that its subclasses can access it. Anticipate exceptions that might come along the way and use proper exception handling to avoid bugs that attackers may exploit. Encryption has always been one of the best ways to secure data. Always encrypt sensitive data like passwords and game assets. All in all, the techniques mentioned above are just some of the techniques one can use to secure his or her game. One can use whatever technique as long as it will help improve the security of his or her game. What’s important is to know security threats that pose risks to your game and be able to implement proper techniques to address these issues.