Second Life Hit By Massive In-Game Worm

An anonymous reader writes, "At 2:46 CST today, the game Second Life was hit by a massive attack by a rogue programmer. Spinning gold rings began to appear in the air and on the ground, and as users interacted with them they began to chase and replicate. Apparently, most people are willing to touch an object they've never seen before and this invoked a worm script that was designed to multiply and spread across the 2,700+ servers run by Linden Labs in California, the game's owner. Many of the six hundred thousand active users experienced serious lag and lost connectivity to the servers, making it one of the largest known denial-of-service attacks in an online game. Linden Labs had to invoke martial law and lock out all logins by users except their staff as they began the task of cleaning the servers of what they began to term 'the grey goo.'" Comments in the SL blog entry indicate that Linden Labs had already deployed a "grey goo fence" before this worm struck, but someone found a hole in it.

Neat!

[the_humeister]

Now what they need is some sort of illness that affects characters temporarily, just like real life! Imagine, your character gets a cold and slows down and sneezes every once in a while. Or hey, you go kiss another character (if that's possible) and your character gets infected with herpes! Wouldn't that be fun? Oh wait - that was me last weekend. Damn.

Ha

[8daze]

Proof that all it takes to kill the Internet is something shiny.

Bad soap opera...

[__aaclcg7560]

Second Life as the worm turns.

Second Life slowed down?

[Ididerus]

Wow, so now they're blaming it on a "worm"... ok. SL is like watching an MMO flipbook, the packet-loss is phenomenal while they continue to supposedly attract corporations and live-weather map projects, host in-game advertising and I'm sure making money off people somehow with Linden cash transfers. Buy some freaking servers, or get rid of the 2,700 solar-powered calculators currently running the thing.

Like a snake around the brainstem

[Fallorn]

Hey Kid, Want to try some Snow Crash?

users thought it was a cock ring

[Anonymous Coward]

SL is full of pervs

Mum nailed it!

[Tablizer]

Like my Mom always used to say: "Don't take virtual candy from virtual strangers".

Re:Second Life needs a new name

[NitroWolf]

"Real Life" is all 1's and 0's at a fundamental level, as well... so what is your point, besides the one on top of your head?

Idiot.

Giant worm??? You know what that means...

[revolu7ion]

honey, we shrunk the secondlife-kids...

Well, look on the bright side...

[freeze128]

It looks like the admins now have a "second job"....

Re:Neat!

[Class Act Dynamo]

I think a good case of explosive diarrhea spreading through the virtual world would be quite amusing.

This sounds like a job for...

[PrismaticBooger]

Sonic the Hedgehog!

Re:Second Life needs a new name

[Jeremi]

Second Life needs to be renamed to give its users a much needed message - namely, Get A Life

I submit that anybody who posts to Slashdot about the other people's need to "get a life" should spontaneously explode from sheer force of concentrated hypocrisy.

Re:Who dun it?

[Mongoose]

Sonic and Tails!

- Shadow

One ring...

[kars]

...to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

Say it ain't so!

[dangitman]

"At 2:46 CST today, the game Second Life was hit by a massive attack by a rogue programmer.

Uh oh, I think SkyNet just became self-aware... of its Second Life account.

Re:Not just misleading, but factually inaccurate t

[RealGrouchy]

It's not just the content, it's also the presentation:

"...Linden Labs in California, the game's owner."

Do Second Life users also grab at modifiers that are dangled [wikipedia.org] in front of them?

- RG>

Re:Ha ha

[Loadmaster]

Well, it was modded "redundant." Obviously everyone was thinking it.

Swi

Playing Doctor.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apparently, most people are willing to touch an object they've never seen before"

You should be so lucky.

Re:Ha

[G-funk]

Linden labs have released Images of the suspected mastermind [arstechnica.com]. If sighted, do not approach the suspect, and inform police!

Re:Neat!

[patio11]

>>
Or hey, you go kiss another character
>>

Kissing another character is not the most likely vector for an infection in Second Life. We'll leave it at that.

Second Life = Snow Crash

[patio11]

Take one look at some of the screenshots from that game and *boom* say byebye to your cerebral cortex. Think of the ugliest possible art stretched into three dimensions doing things that would make Japanese tentacle monsters say "Hey, that just ain't right".

Ah but the big question is...

[Qoroite]

If you get 100 rings do you turn into Super-Sonic? ^_^

Re:Someone please explain

[Kadin2048]

i don't mind it, as long a people remember that its really just a glorified chat program with scripts, ie irc with a gui /fish

In that same vein, I would mind this WWW thing a lot less, if people remember that it's really just a glorified Gopher program with scripts...

Re:Oh NOOO!

[iamacat]

These days playing Second Life with talking animals in sexual situations is bound to give you a virtual STD. Actually I am kind of surprised the first in-game worm is not transmitted though sex between players. That would create a nice Linden buck market in virtual condoms.

Re:Not just misleading, but factually inaccurate t

[Archwyrm]

Apparently you are unaware of the millions of CS kiddies who cry when the Steam servers go down, but maybe that is not getting huffy either.

Re:Someone please explain

[illuminatedwax]

For that to be true you have to count logging (and pissing) off Second Life players as "harm".

Genitals are objects in Second Life

[Anonymous Coward]

you go kiss another character (if that's possible) and your character gets infected with herpes

Genitals are manufactured objects in Second Life, but your normal face's lips are not, so genitals will almost always carry scripts of their own.

This means that kissing another character is unlikely to be a vector for viral infection, but there's a related activity that could easily do this.

Incidentally, waxing your carrot can of course trigger any scripted action in the object, so climax can be rather more visually impressive in Second Life than in your first one.

Re:And it was just getting good

[Angostura]

Next week: "How viruses and trojans prove that e-mail will never be used as a business tool".

Re:Second Life = Snow Crash

[LiquidCoooled]

Am I right in thinking its Kind of like myspace in 3d?

Re:Second Life = Snow Crash

[dodobh]

Ah, creatures from the Dungeon dimensions. Oook!

Re:Someone please explain

[SQLGuru]

But the graphics made the web better than Gopher (or WAIS). The graphics led to pr0n.

Layne