SL brought to it’s knees

Griefers strike again. Second Life is restricted to Linden log-ins only.

Sadly Second Life is currently undergoing some repair after “griefers”, which are the Second Life equivalent of anarcists, attacked using self-replicating objects. Effectively spreading a virus-like grey goo accross the grid/world.

Reading the Linden Blog it is clear that the Lindens are trying their best to squash the bugs and holes in the security which allow this self-replicating attack. I recall when the first (or at least one of the first) replication attacks occured, the defence to that was incorporating code to allow the Lindens to turn off simulators (sims, the 256×256m segments of land which make up the grid) in order to stunt the growth of the attacks. This helped with containing the outburst of the virus, much like amputating a foot to save the leg. However it wasn’t until more recently we had the “grey goo fence” incorporated which uses a formula to decide how many objects and how often can be “rezzed” by a resident on a per sim basis (if I recall correctly). This should manage to stunt the lightning speed spread and allow more time for the Lindens to react to outburst. Unfortunately, as the defences become more elaborate as do the griefers weapons and we see a more distributed attack which somehow sends the self-replicating objects to other users (I myself recieved many when I logged in yesterday), upon receiving these objects they lie dormant in the residents inventory, only if the resident chooses to rez (load into the world/sim) this object can it continue it’s spread. Unfortunately the defence for this at present is trying to educate residents not to accept objects from people they don’t know. Immediately deleting objects from strangers is imperitive at these times, especially ones for which the name is completely made up of numbers (well, as far as I have seen so far).

But then remember how e-mail virii spread? the I Love You virus spread by an attachment to e-mails. Is this not the same thing? How do we defend ourselves against similar threats within a virtual world? Anti-Spam software for our Inventory? These griefers appear to be using the LSL, Linden Scripting Language, without any direct “hacking” of the Second Life system. Playing within the boundaries (if only just) that the scripting language imposes. Unfortunately the answer might be to further limit the scripting tools, an answer I would dearly hate to see actioned. So many wonderful things have been developed by playing against the boundaries (Startax wand anyone?).

Ah well, back to RL for me, hopefully I’ll get my fill of SL later on today.

In the beginning

Well if you’re reading this you have found the fantastic beginning of nand Nerd’s blog. nand Nerd (no capital on the nand) is a resident in the virtual world of Second Life (SL). What is Second Life? A very good question, I could attempt to answer that by saying it’s a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) but that generalisation doesn’t encompass all of Second Life’s patrons. I’ve heard mention SL is the next generation MySpace, however having never looked at a MySpace profile I’d be the last to comment on this description. The list of possible answers to “What is Second Life” could continue, and perhaps it should by interviewing a broad selection of SL’ers (Second Lifers or Second Life Residents) but thats beyond the scope of this opening blog post (damn I’m padding this out way more than I had intended). Second Life to me is a medium for which to build, script and interact. I like nothing more than spending a few hours pottering about with the Second Life building tools. Perhaps spend a couple of evenings working on a script. But mostly I like the interaction with friends I have made through Second Life, friends who range from all over the globe.

Well if you made it this far congrats, heres hoping I’ll not ramble as much on my next post and we’ll see some descriptions of the types of building/scripting/interaction of which I mentioned.

Until next time, take care.