The game consoles and handheld machines available on the market today are designed with Internet and multiplayer connectivity in mind. The goal of this thesis is to investigate whether or not these possibilities open for new and unforeseen security threats. The user base of game consoles has over the last decade had an explosive growth, and the PlayStation 2 alone has sold over 100 million units. The sixth generation of game consoles, including PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, was not big on network connectivity. The seventh generation game consoles were all designed with this in mind, and therefore it is also perceivable that new security vulnerabilities are introduced into people’s lives.
The general public is slowly learning that they need to protect their computers from viruses, Trojans, spam and other malware. With the introduction of the seventh generation of game consoles we see that the consoles are reaching computing power and connectivity that resembles that of a modern desktop computer. But most people do not consider a game console to be a computer, and will therefore not consider protecting it the same way as a computer.
We will investigate whether or not these game consoles introduce new vulnerabilities and if this is the case we will try to give some general advice or develop some guidelines as to what can be done to protect yourself.
A new game console of today is designed to last for several years to come. They are also very uniform, as apposed to the computer world where there are a lot of different configurations. This opens up for viruses, Trojans and other malware being made for specific game consoles. By taking a serious look at this now, we might be able to get ahead of people wanting to misuse this potential in the consoles.
Research questions
