Forbes has an interesting interview with Gary McGraw on how computer games provide insight into the motives and mindset of an attacker.

"What problem do these trust boundaries pose?

In this case, the gamer is the attacker and what they're doing is cheating in the virtual world to generate wealth that they can sell in a middle market. In "World of Warcraft," when you wander around … it turns out that the information about where your character is in the world is just X, Y and Z coordinates controlled by your PC. If you're a clever attacker you can actually change those numbers on your PC [to] teleport around the virtual world. That's just an example. Hacker boys discovered about four years ago that you could make money by cheating and the law is very ambiguous about whether it is actually illegal.

How are games a harbinger of the future of software security?

We can look at what is happening in online games as a bellwether for the sorts of attacks that we're going to see in much more important software systems coming down the line.

We can study these games and play around and figure out how hackers cheat and how they do things like teleport around the world and generate virtual wealth, and we can learn really important lessons for the future of software security at the same time."

Interview Link: http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14782721