Metaverse: Security and Privacy Issues

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the foundational aspects, security and privacy challenges, and broader societal implications of the metaverse, aiming to guide future multidisciplinary research in this emerging field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the metaverse's foundations, security, privacy issues, and potential societal impacts, which has been lacking in prior work.

Findings

Identification of key security and privacy challenges in the metaverse

Discussion of the societal and technological implications of the metaverse

Proposed research directions for future studies

Abstract

The metaverse promises a host of bright opportunities for business, economics, and society. Though, a number of critical aspects are still to be considered and the analysis of their impact is almost non-existent. In this paper, we provide several contributions. We start by analysing the foundations of the metaverse, later we focus on the novel privacy and security issues introduced by this new paradigm, and finally we broaden the scope of the contribution highlighting some of the far-reaching yet logical implications of the metaverse on a number of domains, not all of them in tech. Throughout the paper, we also discuss possible research directions. We believe that the provided holistic view on the foundations, technology, and issues related to the metaverse-with a focus on security and privacy-, other than being an interesting contribution on its own, could also pave the way for a few multidisciplinary research avenues.