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There have been various incidents such as [1] where epileptic folk have been targeted with media designed to induce seizures. And I understand there are medical

There have been various incidents such as [1] where epileptic folk have been targeted with media designed to induce seizures. And I understand there are medical conditions that can cause similar seizures with audio stimulus. I wonder if there are any classes of attack that only become possible using VR? that is, some combination of visual/audio/kinaesthetic inputs that do not occur in the natural world and that would harm a human brain more than a normal induced seizure attack, or affect people who would not normally be susceptible. [1] https://www.wired.com/2008/03/hackers-assault-epilepsy-patients-via-computer/ https://www.wired.com/2008/03/hackers-assault-epilepsy-patie...

grumbel 4y ago
> I wonder if there are any classes of attack that only become possible using VR? Plenty. All you have to do is let the system slowly drift. Humans aren't very good at keeping track of their orientation and position without visual or tactile reference, so you can basically remote control the human wearing VR. You can move them closer to a wall and than the game can instruct them to punch, broken bones will be the results. Happens plenty of times already simply because people aren't careful enough with setting up the playspace for enough away from obstacles. If you would slowly tilt the VR playspace people would start falling over. Again, happens plenty of times already, even without overly malicious games, just having the game world accelerate (e.g. virtual rollercoaster) will throw people out of balance. For a real world example, see "Richie's Plank Experience", which is famous for causing numerous injuries. The game isn't doing anything too special or trying to be malicious (walk over a virtual plank hanging out of a skyscraper), but due to being targeted at VR first-timers as well as encouraging moving around in the real world, you end up with people jumping head first into TVs. All VR system on the market right now do allow you to setup a dedicated play area, that will automatically show and alert you when leaving it. Games can't override that by normal means, but a malicious game would probably not have that hard of a time to work around that.

grumbel 4y ago

> I wonder if there are any classes of attack that only become possible using VR? Plenty. All you have to do is let the system slowly drift. Humans aren't very good at keeping track of their orientation and position without visual or tactile reference, so you can basically remote control the human wearing VR. You can move them closer to a wall and than the game can instruct them to punch, broken bones will be the results. Happens plenty of times already simply because people aren't careful enough with setting up the playspace for enough away from obstacles. If you would slowly tilt the VR playspace people would start falling over. Again, happens plenty of times already, even without overly malicious games, just having the game world accelerate (e.g. virtual rollercoaster) will throw people out of balance. For a real world example, see "Richie's Plank Experience", which is famous for causing numerous injuries. The game isn't doing anything too special or trying to be malicious (walk over a virtual plank hanging out of a skyscraper), but due to being targeted at VR first-timers as well as encouraging moving around in the real world, you end up with people jumping head first into TVs. All VR system on the market right now do allow you to setup a dedicated play area, that will automatically show and alert you when leaving it. Games can't override that by normal means, but a malicious game would probably not have that hard of a time to work around that.