| Second Life Grey Goo Spreads |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Editor |
| Tuesday, 21 November 2006 00:08 |
|
The popular Online Game Second Life has become a target for malware writers with this weekend seeing a serious attack shutting down the game while the problem was resolved. Second Life uses a powerful scripting language (the Linden Scripting Language) to provide users with the ability to create anything in game from the clothes you wear to entire houses and their contents. It seems that malware writers have been able to pervert the use of this Linden Scripting Language to create self-replicating scripts to cause havoc across the game world.The attack is being described as 'Grey Goo' by Linden Research who run the MMO Second Life started on Sunday was visible to the players of the game as it scattered revolving golden rings around the game world. It caused performance issues as it increased the load on the backend that supports the MMO, and required access to 'the Grid' to be blocked while Linden staff cleaned up the mess left by the self replicating scripts. This is probably not the first attack within Second Life and we suspect it will not be the last attack either. As Second Life allows trading of real currency to in game currency and vice versa, this MMO is being seen by many as a good way to make a living. There are many designers operating within the game creating goods and services for in game currency and they transfer that in to real money. As a result it is only a matter of time before someone creates some form of malware to steal, extort or otherwise attack Second Life users to get at their in game currency so it can be converted to real money for the malware author. You can get more updates on this attack from the Linden blog here. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites          |
| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 21 November 2006 00:12 ) |