http://www.welivesecurity.com/2014/08/15/gamescom-2014-world-malware/

Not really gamification, and not really new, but this is an interesting article on the use of game software as an exploitation vector. Gamers spend a lot of money on characters, in-game currencies, and in-game trade goods. Many have high end GPU’s, especially the FPS crowd, making them great for any one who wants to steal computation cycles for bitcoin mining, password cracking, and forced decryption. I expect this to be a growth area for security, especially considering that most people that identify as “hackers,” got their start with things like game software protection cracking, piracy, and game server hosting.

I often tell the story of being flooded during Starcraft sessions as my personal intro to malicious hacking. Never mind things learned with BBS’, MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHs and MOOs, and how to get access to same as a philosophy student when only engineering students got system credentials. Certainly the theft of entertainment has always been a primary motivator for aspiring young haxxors. Eventually some of them apparently grow up and see the market for preying on the paying customers.