Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, stated that they have identified Russian intelligence and military groups trying to spread information through the gaming community.
This information was revealed by Smith at the World Economy Summit. If you’re interested in the state of the video game industry, you can check out our other articles here.
Brad Sams: Russian Intelligence Tries to Penetrate the Gaming Community
In an interview at the World Economy Summit, Brad Smith was asked about the recent leak of Pentagon documents on Minecraft’s Discord server and whether there are leaks and security issues in the gaming world that worry him.
Alright, I’ll put gaming in the right context for this. It’s not like playing Call of Duty is going to cause death in the real world – I mean, this is a video game. What people are talking about is, around gaming, you have a community of gamers that come together, they talk to each other, including when they’re playing games.
Over the last few months, our digital threat analysis team has identified attempts by Russia to penetrate the gaming community… We have advised the government on this. It was [Russian private military company] The Wagner Group, it was Russian intelligence, and they were using this as a place to spread information.
That’s what’s happening here. That includes the Discord channel around Minecraft, including others from this [community].
Brad Smith, President of Microsoft
Smith added that he believes this is “not the number one thing we should worry about” because such groups “will publish information somewhere”.
It just so happened that [the gaming community] was a good place for them to spread information, and eventually the journalists found it.
Brad Smith, President of Microsoft
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