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What's in a game? That question is addressed by an article in The UCSB Current newlsetter titled "Catch 'em All," which explores the popular, viral online mobile game Pokémon Go. Players must provide location and, in some cases, personal information (when signing in through a Google account, for example), which creates the very real potential for leaked information. What’s more, hackers seeking to cash in on the phenomenon have created fake companion apps or launched an attack on the servers.

“The minute it became so popular our concern was that if there was a social component, if there was a way to see where your friends are, then it’s entirely possible for someone to spoof devices and apps, get into the system, and at a large scale, pull down data about where users are,” said UCSB computer science professor Ben Zhao, who studies systems, algorithms, networking and data. Zhao, along with his students, recently proved that the popular community-based navigation app Waze was vulnerable to hacking by creating fake accounts to intercept information between Waze users.

But Pokémon Go itself presents little risk of information leaks, according to Zhao. Read the full article here.