The article is focused to introduce the topic of information technology security for Virtual Worlds to a security experts’
audience. Virtual Worlds are Web 2.0 applications where the users cruise through the world with their individually shaped
avatars to find either amusement, challenges or the next best business deal. People do invest a lot of time but beyond they
invest in buying virtual assets like fantasy witcheries, wepaons, armour, houses, clothes,...etc with the power of real world
money. Although it is called “virtual” (which is often put on the same level as “not existent”) there is a real value behind
it. In November 2007 dutch police arrested a seventeen years old teenager who was suspicted to have stolen virtual items in
a Virtual World called Habbo Hotel [Reuters07]. In order to successfully provide security mechanisms into Virtual Worlds it
is necessarry to fully understand the domain for which the security mechansims are defined. As Virtual Worlds must be clasified
into the domain of Social Software the article starts with an overview of how to understand Web 2.0 and gives a short introduction
to Virtual Worlds. The article then provides a consideration of assets of Virtual Worlds participants, describes how these
assets can be threatened and gives an overview of appopriate security requirements and completes with an outlook of possible
countermeasures.