Some extraordinary people always go ahead of technological innovations with their imaginations, and things that seem like dreams to us suddenly become reality.
Metaverse, which is used as an abbreviation of the phrase meta-universe, defines it as a hypothetical synthetic environment ‘digital world’, which is connected with a physical world where science fiction, technological products and a decentralized structure combine with the blockchain infrastructure that will form the infrastructure of the real and virtual world.
The word ‘metaverse’ changed into first coined in a chunk of speculative fiction named Snow Crash, written through Neal Stephenson in 1992. In this novel, Stephenson defines the metaverse as large digital surroundings parallel to the physical world, wherein users interact thru digital avatars. At the time of writing this novel, the internet was not yet open to ordinary people. At that time, the first version of the Internet was called ARPANET and was used by the American Ministry of Defense mostly for military purposes.
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook with the new name Meta, describes Metaverse as a concretized internet where you are in the content instead of just viewing the content. If we make it simpler, it talks about a new world where the virtual world and the real world will be intertwined.
I think that the sectors that will use Metaverse the most will be education and retail trade sectors. Today, we see online shopping sites as advanced technology, but in fact, this order and sales method will have turned into living spaces where buyers can experience them in a different way with the metaverse. Trying on and ordering the clothes on the actor while watching any movie or TV show can be given as an example.
Metaverse is fictionalized as a parallel Universe where people can shop, work and socialize using special glasses, gloves and helmets. It is predicted that in the coming years, stores that will sell metaverse products will be opened and a new sector will be formed. In this respect, the metaverse is designed not only in the virtual world, but also in a structure in which we can create a replica of our existence in the physical world and exist in it. With the Metaverse, the rules seem to change completely.
Along with Metaverse, the internet environment as we know it is also evolving and is rapidly moving towards web 4.0. Let’s briefly recall the history of the web and what it offers us.
WEB 1.0 had static sites, serving only content. So people were just listening and watching.
In WEB 2.0, content can be presented, managed, and content can be received from visitors. In other words, while people were listening and watching, they also started talking.
With the first corona virus case seen in our country in March 2020, due to the corona virus, which is now an undesirable part of our lives, it had to enter our lives with many “mandatory” innovations and digital transformations. First, workplaces switched to home Office layout. With the normalization process, some breathing was taken and the hybrid working model was started. We have all experienced this process in Web 2.0.
In WEB 3.0, on the other hand, it is aimed that the contents gain meaning and interact with each other. Thus, along with people, web pages started to talk to and follow each other. Web 3.0 comes into play at the point where it is possible to communicate with someone over the internet without an intermediary. Web 3.0 will allow for a decentralized connection without any intermediaries.
Applications called “app” in Web 2.0 are called “dapp” (Decentralized app) in Web 3.0. In other words, dapps working with wallet logic will be used instead of applications to browse the internet. Thus, only the producer will receive the fee for the content produced, and the concept of intermediation will disappear. When you listen to a song, read a news or access and benefit from any content, the fee will not go to the applications. Because the content owners will deliver the work they have created directly to the user and there will be no intermediaries. That’s what the decentralized system we’re talking about promises to do. Web 3.0 will be an infrastructure for Metaverse.
Web 4.0 is a web technology based entirely on virtualization, where local disks are not used. Even before Web 3.0 was fully implemented and used and before we, the users, could adopt the Web 3.0 concept, various studies were started on Web 4.0. Artificial intelligence and “Augmented Reality” technology come to the fore in Web 4.0 technology.
Lawyers have already begun to think about what will change in the moral, legal and ethical aspects with the metaverse. Because wherever there are virtual or real people, there is always a crime. Where there is a crime, precautions should be taken regarding cyber security and such an infrastructure should be evaluated in terms of cyber security. Facts Do not stay far away, after all, a new world is being established and how will we take our place there, and what kind of cyber security risks await us in this world, let’s try to analyze it together.
Complex services on the metaverse platform generate information specific to you, such as consumer behavior, environmental information, and biometric information. Because such personalized statistics are generated and shared in real time, it becomes complex to determine exactly how much of it will be shared publicly, with whom, for what reason and when it will be destroyed. This makes it difficult for all of us to have control over your personal information. For this reason, Metaverse, like other IT systems, has information and privacy security issues.
With Metaverse we will be able to own things, lands and properties in a virtual world. So how do we protect what we have in the virtual environment? For example, we will need digital money to work in the metadata base such as non-changeable tokens (NFTs). NFTs are a hot topic right now and hackers are already finding ways to steal NFTs and sell their zero-day exploits as NFTs. Therefore, if NFTs are used in the metaverse, we must be prepared for attacks from there.
Some might argue that we already have internet connectivity everywhere, but if we imagine a few years down the road, we will always and constantly be connected by a variety of devices and devices, not just laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Home appliances, lighting, gadgets, personal health monitors, glasses, watches, communication devices, in short, any other object or service that has a chip and can connect to or host a server will be part of the Internet of Things (IoT). This will widen the attack surface and make it uncontrollable.
In a world where everything is interconnected, the use and management of personal data will become an even more sensitive issue and more robust privacy policies will need to be implemented. This responsibility will need to be determined in some way, as it will be more difficult to determine who owns the data and who will be responsible if some type of breach occurs.
With Web 3.0 we will face the extreme security vulnerabilities of integrated data. Imagine accessing all your smart devices and accounts with a single password. Since only one account will contain all your personal data and sensitive information, once a malicious entity such as a cybercriminal gets hold of it, it can potentially control your entire life. No matter how sturdy this door is, once opened, your whole life could be in danger. On the other hand, necessary precautions need to be taken to verify that the other person is real, not manipulated using metadata, and how to verify the other person. If a person’s metadata is stolen, it must be ensured that it cannot be manipulated or imitated.
The more time people spend creating their metadata, creating their own personality in the virtual environment, investing in digital items, a data breach can mean not only a nuisance but also a huge amount of real financial loss.
They wanted to know what we’ve done to technology companies until now, they want to know what we’re going to do next, maybe we’ll talk about what they’re going to make us do in phase three.
[…] and Web 3.0 Cyber Security Risks”, Cyber Security Lab & Blog, December 7, 2021, (Online), https://ozdenercin.com/2021/12/10/metaverse-and-web-3-0-cyber-security-risks/, […]
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