Carding in the Metaverse: Will Virtual Asset and Identity Theft Become the New Battleground?

[Professor]

Abstract: A new digital topography is emerging before our eyes — metaverses, spaces where virtuality and reality intertwine. Here, people work, communicate, invest, and create, owning unique digital assets: from virtual land and art to stylish skins for their avatars. Anything of value attracts attention. This article is a calm and thoughtful exploration of the emerging threat landscape in metaverses. We will consider how classic carding schemes may mutate in this environment, what new forms of "theft" may emerge, and whether protecting your digital self will become as important as protecting your bank account.

Introduction: An Economy Where Your Clothes Are NFTs​

The metaverse isn't a game. It's a three-dimensional extension of the digital economy. Whereas value was once tied to data on a flat screen (money in an account, shares), it now takes on form, color, and location. Your avatar is your digital identity, your representative in this world. Their clothes, jewelry, virtual home, collectible wall art — all of these can be tokenized assets (NFTs) with a market value in real money. Where property arises, so does the incentive to misappropriate it. But the methods will be different.

1. New assets mean new targets for theft​

What exactly might become the target of an attacker's attention in the metaverse?

• Digital Identity (Avatar and its Reputation): A well-developed, respected avatar with a history and connections is social capital. It can be used for fraud within the community (like phishing, but in the virtual world) or sold as a ready-made "account" with credibility.
• Virtual Real Estate (LAND, Parcels): Plots of digital land in promising areas of metaverses (near virtual versions of Times Square or Buckingham Palace) are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Theft of property rights through wallet hacking or social engineering is a direct analog of real-world real estate fraud.
• Digital luxury and art goods (NFT assets): Unique avatar clothing items from fashion brands, virtual paintings by famous artists, rare vehicles. Theft of these assets isn't a loss of functionality, but rather a loss of status and investment.
• In-game currency and earnings (Play-to-Earn): Many metaverses have their own economies, where players' time and effort are converted into crypto tokens. Hacking a wallet to steal these savings is a direct descendant of carding, but the goal isn't the dollars on the card, but MANA, SAND, or APE Coin.

2. Evolution of methods: From carding to "avataring"​

Classic schemes adapt to the new environment, acquiring unique features.

2.1. Social Engineering in 3D Space (Immersive Phishing)
Imagine: a friendly character approaches your avatar in a cozy virtual café. He introduces himself as the platform's technical support: "We've noticed suspicious activity with your wallet. We need your seed phrase for verification. Would you like to proceed to the safe zone?" He leads you to an isolated virtual room, decorated exactly like a support office, complete with logos. Pressure, trust in the "official" environment, and ignorance of the rules are powerful weapons. This is phishing, but with full immersion.

2.2. Hacking and Simulating a Digital Identity (Avatar Hijacking)

• Credential Theft: Good old keylogging or phishing to access a metaverse account.
• Behavioral Cloning: A more sophisticated method. Using records of your movements, gestures, and communication patterns in the metaverse, AI can create a "bot double" that temporarily impersonates you to trick your contacts into giving you assets or trust while you're offline.
• Man-in-the-Room attack: In a shared VR space where multiple avatars view the same interface, an attacker can use a modified client to project fake pop-up windows (such as a transaction confirmation request) directly into the victim's field of view.

2.3. Exploiting Smart Contract and Bridge Vulnerabilities (DeFi Style)
Many assets live on the blockchain, and interaction with them occurs through smart contracts. Attacks familiar from the DeFi world will migrate to the metaverse:

• Bridge hacking between different blockchains that power metaverses to steal tokens.
• Exploiting vulnerabilities in trading platform contracts or NFTs themselves to perform unauthorized asset transfers.

2.4. In-game cheating and "unfair play"

• Fake Marketplaces: Create fake stores or auctions in the metaverse that accept assets but do not deliver goods.
• Using game bugs (exploits) to copy or appropriate other people's items.

3. Unique security challenges​

Security in the metaverse is more difficult due to its nature.

• Blurring the line between game and reality: Users in an immersive (VR) state are less critical and easier to deceive. Emotional attachment to the avatar and its possessions can lead to rash decisions.
• Decentralization and the Liability Problem: Who's to blame if your NFT is stolen in the Decentraland metaverse? The platform developers? The operators of a specific server? You yourself, because you didn't keep track of your keys? Jurisdiction is unclear.
• Difficulty of tracking and recovery: If Bitcoin can be traced back to its original source, how can you prove that it was this particular virtual drum set, and not an exact copy, that was stolen from you? Recovering a lost, unique digital item is a philosophical and technical challenge.
• Psychological damage: Identity theft may be perceived not as a loss of property, but as a profound personal violation, an act of vandalism against a part of one's identity. This adds an ethical dimension to the crime.

4. Emerging approaches to protection​

The industry is just beginning to recognize these risks and seek solutions.

• Behavioral Biometrics: Systems that analyze your avatar's unique movement, gesture, and navigation patterns to distinguish you from a bot or attacker who has gained access to your account.
• Hardware wallets and multisig for the metaverse: Using physical devices to confirm large virtual real estate transactions. Multisig schemes requiring confirmation from multiple trusted parties to transfer unique assets.
• Decentralized reputation systems (Soulbound Tokens — SBT): The concept of tokens tied to a digital soul (account) that cannot be transferred. They can store a history of positive actions and verified identity, creating a "digital resume" that is difficult to forge from scratch.
• Education and digital hygiene in VR: Developing a security culture within the metaverses themselves: training centers, clear transaction confirmation interfaces, and built-in alerts about suspicious activity.

Conclusion: Not a new battlefield, but a new phase of evolution​

Carding in metaverses won't be a fundamentally new phenomenon. It will be the next logical step in the evolution of cybercrime, following on from bank cards, social media accounts, and cryptocurrency wallets.

The battlefield is shifting from the flat screen to a three-dimensional, socially rich space. Here, it's not just numbers in a database that are being stolen, but parts of our digital existence. This will require us to rethink what constitutes value, property, and personal security in a world where our selves are taking on a second, visual form.

The future of metaverse security will depend on building security into their very architecture — making it as integral as the laws of physics in the virtual world. The goal is to create spaces that are not only surprising and open, but also inherently safe for economic and social life, allowing people to create and interact without fear of losing part of their digital selves. This is a monumental challenge, but also an opportunity to build a more secure digital world from scratch, learning from the mistakes of the past.