The hilarity of the 2005 movie Wedding Crashers starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn surprisingly relates to 2022 and the Metaverse. Astoundingly enough, innovative Metaverse parties are likely to be around the corner since the technology is already in place, and it appears that these types of digital parties may become mainstream very soon.
Just like John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey in the movie Wedding Crashers made crashing parties into an entertaining art, it is likely that digital party crashers will also turn it into a digitally infused art very soon.
There is no doubt that anything in the real world, such as weddings, get-togethers, birthdays, company parties, could be in the form of a full virtual reality Metaverse party, where guests will be able to use 3D avatars as a digital representation of themselves.
It is also likely that physical parties will integrate into virtual Metaverse parties and evolve into a hybrid party where guests connecting over the web can partake in the physical event. Physical event participants would still be able to use avatars.
Related technologies are advancing at unprecedented speeds fueling these innovative party scenarios considerably. It is not far-fetched to suggest that a botnet could integrate to these Metaverse parties for various additional functions within the next-gen party.
Let’s further explore this potential futuristic phenomenon and its various possible permutations and implications from a societal standpoint and from the lenses of the cyber security world.
Social Digital Metaverse Party Crashers
Suppose the party invite boils down to a simple URL link and an email registration. In that case, it is not far-fetched to deduce that if this link leaks somehow beyond the intended guests of the party, uninvited guests are a likely scenario.
There are many potential societal motives for this. Perhaps motives such as an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend looking to know what their ex-partner is up to.
For that reason, party hosts and organizers should implement cyber secure practices to ensure that only the intended guests of the party will be able to participate. Many existing authentication methods could be employed, including MFA multi-factor authentication just before entering the digital Metaverse party.
Participants should also ensure that they are taking steps from a cyber privacy standpoint, such as using a VPN to add anonymity in terms of their real IP and location and in terms of ensuring that their social interactions are encrypted in an end-to-end fashion.
Metaverse Digital Party Crashers from a Cybersecurity Angle
As opposed to the prior more social angle, there is a deeper angle with many more motives; the Cybersecurity angle. Entirely virtual and hybrid digital Metaverse parties could present many new hacking opportunities and the perfect conduit for collecting competitive intelligence, data breaches, and even as a new platform to spread malware.
The likeliness that corporations will have Metaverse corporate events and holiday parties in the future is very significant. With lots of “confidential” conversations, hackers will become very motivated to hack the virtual spaces where these parties will take place and take advantage of every possible exploit they will discover. Competitive intelligence often is worth very handsome monetary amounts. This is why hackers are likely to continue in their relentless and unwavering efforts to wage cyberattacks, resulting in successful, profitable results.
For this reason, Metaverse party hosts and organizers, especially in large organizations, must work closely with their respective cyber security departments to ensure that the cyber security angle is addressed in an end-to-end fashion and that hacking party crashers are thwarted on a consistent basis.