My work involves network security and recently we have been asked to investigate support for online video games. One thing is for sure that security and video games don’t go well… A lot of the information that you needed are not available on the official sites and without the actual media and hardware it is difficult to support some products.
Most commonly requested game in our case is World of Warcraft (if it was up to me I would leave it blocked) and even if it is hosted on dedicated servers it is difficult to implement. The worst part is Blizzard downloader which is using torrent protocol to update… by permitting Blizzard downloader we would be creating vulnerability on the network that can be used to tunnel illegal torrent traffic or in some cases even worst.
What are your opinions about this? Is it worth the hassle or is it easier just to allow most requested media?
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James Pinnell
I think that for the money we pay, all downloads though be direct, HTTP/FTP links.
If the game was free, P2P would make sense, but for a game like WoW that you pay for, I expect to always be able to DD.
December 18th, 2009 at 18:07
Chris Carter
If you know where to look, you can find unofficial WoW updates/patches via direct download on trusted sites.
But yes, it should be available officially from Blizzard via direct download. Updating WoW through a University firewall that prohibited torrents was a pain.
December 19th, 2009 at 18:33