Security and Privacy in Metaverse: A Comprehensive Survey

Abstract

Metaverse describes a new shape of cyberspace and has become a hot-trending word since 2021. There are many explanations about what Meterverse is and attempts to provide a formal standard or definition of Metaverse.However, these definitions could hardly reach universal acceptance. Rather than providing a formal definition of the Metaverse, we list four must-have characteristics of the Metaverse: socialization, immersive interaction, real world-building, and expandability. These characteristics not only carve the Metaverse into a novel and fantastic digital world, but also make it suffer from all security/privacy risks, such as personal information leakage, eavesdropping, unauthorized access, phishing, data injection, broken authentication, insecure design, and more. This paper first introduces the four characteristics, then the current progress and typical applications of the Metaverse are surveyed and categorized into four economic sectors. Based on the four characteristics and the findings of the current progress, the security and privacy issues in the Metaverse are investigated. We then identify and discuss more potential critical security and privacy issues that can be caused by combining the four characteristics. Lastly, the paper also raises some other concerns regarding society and humanity.

Using the metaverse in training: lessons from real cases

“…Research on early versions of the metaverse showed that privacy issues remain a critical limitation of the metaverse (Kye et al , 2021; Huang et al , 2023). Scholars explained that providing an immersive experience requires that users’ personal information be collected, such as physiological, physical and social information.…”

“…Users’ personal information, body movements, live locations and interactions are essential for the functioning of this system (Di Pietro and Cresci, 2021). There is also a risk of collecting sensitive information via headsets, cameras and eye trackers, which violates users’ privacy (Huang et al , 2023).…”

Integration of IoT and blockchain for decentralized management and ownership in the metaverse

“…29 The creation of a truly immersive metaverse demands significant progress in various technological fields, including graphics, networking, AI, and human-computer interaction. Moreover, issues surrounding privacy, 30 security, 18 governance, 31 and ethical conduct within the metaverse require careful deliberation and regulation. Despite these impediments, the metaverse presents an alluring prospect, promising a novel paradigm of digital interaction and connectivity that could significantly impact diverse sectors of society and the economy.…”

“…However, the path to actualizing a fully immersive metaverse is riddled with technical, legal, and ethical challenges. These range from creating hyper‐realistic graphics and managing voluminous data to maintaining real‐time interactions at scale and addressing issues related to data privacy, 18 digital ownership, 19 and virtual behavior 20 . Despite these obstacles, a successful metaverse promises substantial rewards, unlocking novel opportunities in gaming, social networking, 21 e‐commerce, 22 education, and remote work.…”

Security vulnerability analysis of metaverse in cyberspace

“…The development and research of metaverse involve many areas, and some papers have outlined the key technologies related to metaverse 1,4 , such as extended reality 5 , blockchain [6][7][8] , artificial intelligence 9,10 , and 5G technology 11 . Several papers have introduced research on metaverse security and privacy [12][13][14][15][16] . Wang et al have introduced the security vulnerability and countermeasures of metaverse from several aspects such as authentication and authorization, access control, data management, privacy threats, network, society, and governance 17 .…”