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posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the never-surf-alone dept.

Roblox[*] blames 'gang rape' on hacker adding code to game

A popular children's video game has blamed a virtual "gang rape" on a hack of its systems. Amber Petersen's seven-year-old daughter was playing Roblox, when [her online avatar] was attacked by two male characters staging violent sexual acts.

The firm said the incident was caused by an attack on one of its computer servers that has been dealt with. But experts have cautioned parents not to let young children play online without supervision. They warn it is unlikely this will be the last time such a hack occurs.

After Ms Petersen witnessed the attack on her family iPad, she posted screenshots and an account of the event on her Facebook page, detailing the experience. Ms Petersen said that when her daughter had asked what was happening on the screen, she had viewed a "horrific" scene of her child's avatar being sexually assaulted by two male characters. Towards the end of the incident, she said, a third, female character interfered by jumping on the victim's body.

The BBC understands that the hacker responsible managed to subvert the California-based company's cyber-protection systems, allowing them to upload code that changed the game's rules and made customised animations appear. Roblox previously confirmed that it had identified the account responsible and blocked it from its platform.

[*] From the company web site, Roblox:

Roblox is the best place to Imagine with Friends. With the largest user-generated online gaming platform, and over 15 million games created by users, Roblox is the #1 gaming site for kids and teens (comScore). Every day, virtual explorers come to Roblox to create adventures, play games, role play, and learn with their friends in a family-friendly, immersive, 3D environment.

A victim of dank memes? Or the powerful scripting system?

Original Facebook post. Also at TechCrunch and The Washington Post.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Friday July 20 2018, @08:04PM

    by vux984 (5045) on Friday July 20 2018, @08:04PM (#710099)

    Quite. It's not hard. The TV/Computer/Whatever is not a nanny. Do your fscking job and be a parent

    What the fuck does that smug bullshit even mean? "be a parent" ?

    As a parent, my kids were allowed to play games, and lego, and cars/trucks, blocks, and read. And of course they were supervised while they were younger. But so what? Supervised means i know what's going on, i know what they are up to, supervised means I don't rely the game to raise them for me.

    "Being a parent" means I'm around, and checking in regularly; and making sure i know where they are an what they are up to; even while giving them age appropriate amounts of time and space to explore on their own too.

    It certainly doesn't mean I'm sitting there holding their hand the entire time, with my finger on the power switch ready to kill the power the second something happens.

    So if they were in 2nd grade for example (age 7 as in the example), that's old enough that they can ask for permission to play 'club penguin' (i think it was at the time) and they can sit at the laptop at the kitchen table and do their thing while I'm doing mine; and if the game is hacked and suddenly the screens fills up with profanity, vulgarity, violence, and porn... my kids still going to see it at least for several seconds perhaps even a minute or two (expecially if there's no audio); until i either notice it or they call me and ask about it.

    I'm not sure what difference you think "being a parent" would have made here; or why you think the parents in this situation "failed" at it.

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