Second Life Grid Under Attack

The Second Life grid is under concerted attack again, and has been for more than 2 days, but the Lindens are not being up front about what's going on, and their chief mouthpiece, the SL Insider, is deliberately distracting from the real story about the systematic effort to take SL down by one notorious racist griefer group, the Patriotic Nigras, a group related to the b/tards and 4/chan. The purpose of these concerted, deliberate attacks, which aren't done by random script kiddies or copycats, but are conscious, timed, and identical in M.O. to every other attacks, is to paralyze SL particularly for useful purposes, like this last weekend's Relay for Life to raise money for cancer research.

I saw this happening 2 days ago and didn't report it, because I didn't wish to create fodder for griefer victory-dancing. It's always hard to make a judgement about news coverage of griefing, so as not to fuel it, and usually I don't report it for just that reason, but at a certain point, the threshold of "the public's right to know" is reached. These attacks of the last two days appeared like a hundred other attacks I didn't report, which started with the very well-worn, tried-and-true early-warning system: attacking me and a few other prominent people in SL. I've proved to be this sort of early-warning system countless times before, I promptly and repeatedly report to the Lindens, but I never know if they've understood that they should listen when I tell them about an attack.

Here's what's been happening. The first sign of trouble was hundreds of offline IMs, seeming from the following people: Urizenus Sklar, Maldavius Figtree, Mia Linden, Phillip Linden, Frontier Linden. That suggests Uri could be ranting at me or the Herald drahma -- so I log on in a hurry, checking the location of the IM. Sure enough, it's not Uri at all, and of course it's not Frontier or "Phillip" Linden either, who spells his name with one "l". The messages are like this: ATTENTION: THE GRID IS UNDER ATTACK, THE PN HAS CLOSED THIS POOL. ALSO COCKS.

THOUSANDS of them pour into my two accounts, as if spammed from some object. Checking the IMs, I see the owner of an object named "GreySkall Barbosa," aged 1 day, is sending them from this URL, probably a sandbox or land left with build and no autoreturn or something. This was a common griefing tactic a few months ago, as thousands of notecards came spamming into my account from griefers in sandboxes using a notecard created by someone who was NOT spamming me and was offline and oblivious, in order to get me a) mad at that person and b) get me running to the location -- only to find that they were gone, with their spam objects still spamming.

But this time, there were no objects when I went to the locations, which included various sandboxes and odd sims I couldn't figure out, nor were there any notecards. With the objects *named* "Mia Linden" and "Urizenus", it seemed as if it was chat coming from them right near me -- but it wasn't at all, those people weren't even online, I checked.

I reasoned that somehow, these griefers had exploited some new or previously unavailable hole in the client to reach directly into my chat space and spam into it from remote positions. (The chat is only visible to me.) I figured that the new "message liberation" thing could be involved, or some kind of communications server, or some sort of chatting store-and-forward thingie.

The deluge of green chat increased into the next 12 to 24 hours, growing worse. I was in a green thicket like this: "Lindenfags: The Grid is Under Attack. Also Cocks" which then changed to something like "The Grid is Pwned". Other names were added, and there was no way to mute the objects -- you cannot mute Lindens, so objects *named* with Linden names weren't mutable. I muted the other names, but no sooner did I have 12 object names muted, with just the odd Linden name rotating through, they'd think up yet another name to put into the cycle.

Finally, I reduced chat to fade after a second and show only one line, which pretty much paralyzed all my work trying to check rental boxes, notecard givers etc. etc.

By day 2, I was getting the angry email from other people also getting this same sort of spam, who didn't realize that it wasn't me chatting or spamming, just as it wasn't "Phillip Linden," but was a spoofed object. After all, they could see if they logged off and went into offline IMs that a URL would show, and that URL would also indicate that *another person* named Grayskull (or other one-day-old accounts) was sending the junk, not me. No amount of reasoning with some particularly dense and angry people would work. One of them even invoked Angel Fluffy, saying that he had confirmed in group chat that I was a known griefer. What a raging, fucking asshole. I don't grief. I do not harm anyone in Second Life. I don't spam chat, or particle blast, or shoot, or do absolutely anything to offend on land, against the TOS. These are *griefers* whose purpose is to set people against those named. Ask the Lindens. They know I am not making or putting out such things; I don't know even know how to script them. They are merely named for me, or take objects I've created and put malicious scripts in them.

Maldavius was named along with Urizenus, because both names figured prominently lately in disputes with me, Uri only indirectly (he's been MIA through the drahma) and Mal only as the person who demonstratively griefed me, by standing on my head defiantly and repeatedly during the Concierge party, without the Lindens doing a goddamn thing to stop it. (At one point I said to Spike Linden, who seemed to be grinning through the whole thing, "Permission to shoot?" and he said "Granted : )". Yeah, that's how they solve things. I looked in my inventory but my Ordinal ordnance was missing, and I fear I wouldn't be able to shoot it. I pulled out my very first SL object, the Axe of the Leviathan and slashed repeatedly and the pixelated vaporous monster, the ugly soul manifestation of the avatar Maldavius. Spike only laughed harder. Yeah, that's how it is. More on that later.)

So now, come to find out from Tateru at the Blingsider, that this attack isn't just for me, or for Lusk, or for some of the other high profile people, while we're targeted, but is clogging up channels by making some communications high priority. She called it an "escalation" bug.

She then -- preposterously -- goes on to tell us that it isn't really the Patriotic Nigras. A more pigheaded and wilfully misleading concept I cannot imagine. Of course it's the PNs. It has all the usual M.Os., including, I might add, the same trademark step used in all these attacks: singling out me, my name, my enemies, etc. etc. for the first wave of attack, followed by various replicating objects (I saw a lot of Spongebob boxes on physics out all over the place). Duh. This has happened so many millions of times that really, the Lindens should put a DEW-line on my avatar and the minute anything happens to a hair on his head, they should scramble and cry "wheels-up".

Two days of this on several accounts, and I was quite weary. I couldn't log on with alts, as my objects like doors for tenants are tied to these accounts. So I stumbled on, hugely lagged out and nearly incapacitated.

It's too bad that I don't know specialized terms like "escalation blah blah" and that when I file abuse reports -- which I never do nowadays unless there is a really egregious attack involving something I cannot effect, larger than my own land, i.e. on Linden land, or in this case, into the very interstices of the world's workings themselves.

I realized there was something very different about being able to invade chat, and knew enough to alert the Lindens, but after my last escapade discovering the script-copy bug and having them ignore even urgent appeals to security@lindenlab.com, I gave up. Hey, it's their game.

What does it mean for Leninists to be able to seize the telegraph station so easily? It means the conspiracy continues. Lenin understood that the first thing you must do in a revolutionary coup is to seize the telegraph station, the post, the papers -- the means of communication -- and put out your own messages, and disrupt the government's messages.

Nobody likes me calling it a Leninist conspiracy, but that's because they take these two words very literally. Leninist merely means people for whom the ends justifies the means, that is, they believe their cause, which is to disrupt the grid and have people not take it seriously, justifies even violent and criminal means, just as the Bolsheviks did. They also understand, as Lenin did, the usefulness of having people smeared like "Prokofy Neva" or "Mia Linden," and they understand the utilitarian value of the useful idiots like Tateru, who distract from the conspirators. And here, conspiracy is used not in some tinfoil outerspace notion, but in the direct, criminal-code language defining overt acts planned and committed by two or more people in a group.

What is the solution?

o The Lindens need to revive their FBI case. If they ever had one. By holding a press conference and demonstratively noting on the steps of a courthouse or some other very visible RL building that they understand this is a RL crime and they will pursue it in real life where it occurs. It is a denial-of-service-attack.

o The Lindens need to stop considering these recurring crime problems as merely bug-testing challenges that they put out as a challenge to an assortment of script kiddies ranging from actual teenagers to griefers hiding out in various open groups and channels who sometimes "help" with bugs by "pushing the limits". They need to put paid, benefitted, payrolled, adults on the job whose work is classified and kept a corporate secret.

o The Lindens need to close every single group that is found to harbour any of these griefers, once they have reason to believe that the group itself is not infiltrated merely because it is open, but is in fact receptive to, harbouring, recruiting, abetting any of these griefers. They need to watch all the new accounts into these groups.

o The Lindens need to ask all persons who suffered down time, damaged property, loss of business, etc. to provide direct testimony to a commission, or to FBI agents who are on this case. In fact, it would be great if all these lawyers running around SL now looking for something to do, would start up a Lockerbie sort of class-action suit of all those harmed by the Patriotic Nigras, who have suffered crashed sims, lost customers, lost log-on time, damages of various sorts. After taking depositions from all persons who have lost business, and made an effort to establish how this fits under torts law, and what monetary value can be ascribed to it, they need to approach the Lindens with a request to turn over the names, and join Linden to the suit.

o If LL can't turn over the names as they are throw-away alts, I'd like to hear A LOT more about what's happening with security. I just had my RL name taken no doubt by a griefer, as it happened to roll up on the people list. By a fluke, I got word that the new names contained my RL name and hurried to sign up --only to find numerous roadblocks in place to signing up, even with my RL name, RL e-mail address, and perfectly well-working credit-card. My God, it's so fucking annoying that I can't sign up my RL name -- or any account -- if I play honestly, but if I play like a griefer, I have no problem.

I went back and put in a less-used email -- walla, the account went through. The payment refused to be accepted. Oh well, bag that premium then, will sort out later. I next get an email in that email that requires I reconfirm. So you must supply at least a consistent anonymous yahoo address and pick up that mail and confirm it. That means LL has IPs, and could conceivably also work with yahoo or other free email companies to do more tracking. Yes, we all know that IPs are dynamic and many people share them and all the rest.

But...it's a start, one piece of dynamically-changing identifying data that still dynamically changes within a certain circumference, which you then add pieces to, in order to reduce the circumference. And the hashmark stuff really should be working as advertised, no? And if not, why not?

Are free accounts and unverified process to blaim? I seriously do not think they are. I think groups are to blame, and the refusal of the Lindens to crack down and police groups of scripters better, to follow IRC and other chat and watch the early-warning signs (people often brag of impending attacks and recruit from them) and they need to seriously and demonstratively turn to the FBI -- and add in the aspect of property damages. I do hope some RL lawyers will step up to this historic cyber-challenge.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

They should close the grid - it's useless now, just causing damage.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

Oh come on - "Leninist" doesn't mean that at all. It means people who follow the ideological lead of Lenin. PN types are not noted for their interest in decades-old political philosophies. They're not actually noted for any sort of ideological consistency at all, even though some of them may post pretentious teenage tracts claiming some sort of ideological basis for their actions.

[M. Schell]

The Lindons cannot be allowed to supress or infiltrate any group in the name of order. To do so would mean the PN would have already won.

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
-Lenin

Besides... the grid could use a revolution..

[Prokofy Neva]

They are Leninist in following the methods, ideas, and even symbols of Lenin. They may do this as a joke, and may lay it on thick to harass me in particular, but they understood some basic things about terror, which was in large part invented by Russian revolutionaries for the modern world.

There is always this die-hard wish to preserve Lenin for some good; for some nice interpretation; for something vaguely about helping poor people. Everybody has gotten over doing that for Nazis and the SS and Hitler. They need to get over it for the other evil of the 20th century, the Leninists.

These people are not teenagers. They may recruit and use teens, but they are not babies at all.

"It's unlikely that the Nigras themselves are actually responsible for the work, as most of them are 'script kiddies' (people who cannot create or modify software) and this sort of thing seems to be well above their usual displayed capacity (usually limited to screaming obscenities, using cage-guns or employing the work of others). Most likely, their eagerness to cause trouble is being exploited by someone else."

What's annoying and stupid about this sort of gross fellow-travelling spinning is that in fact, the 4/chan, b/tard, PN, v-5 pick-a-name is indeed run by perfectly adult, skilled, conscious people who aren't accidently scripting stuff they can't keep control of, but very deliberately time their attacks, have the same M.O.s, and find very sophisticated ways of making these attacks.

I don't know why there is so much resistance to seeing ths. You open your eyes, you see it.

[Prokofy Neva]

They don't need to suppress any group. THey need to investigate and exam groups that keep turning up hordes of griefers in them, and start to realize this is no accident, comrade. The groups who keep having these people among their members need to be challenged about why they are in their groups, and asked about what they know.

[Prokofy Neva]

In the name of the freedom of these groups to go on harbouring griefers, all of our freedom even to use the grid is being suppressed. So what about that? Civil liberties extremists always invoke the rights of terrorists. Think about the rights of victims, too.

[Ordinal Malaprop]

They're not Leninists even if they appropriate Communist iconography (let's not get into the endless factions of communism on this score) any more than if someone appropriates Nazi iconography - which is not unknown, though tends to lead to an automatic ban in SL so is less common - they are Nazis. I have had dealings with both types, mostly the latter; there _are_ real, race-hate Nazis in SL, but silly kids waving swastikas for the shock value is not an indication. There is no ideological link here.

The point about them being script kiddies in the main is mostly a practical one. When they claim to have developed some amazing world-crashing device, that can be taken with a pinch of salt. What it really means - at most - is that some fairly mediocre scripters have spent time investigating the existing, unpatched, holes in SL, the ones which have been forgotten by the Love Machine, and exploited them. In most cases it just means that they have some antiquated sim-crash scripts which have been copy-pasted into new prims, and which don't do what they say they will. If they are good at anything, it is propaganda.

[Just Some Guy]

Most of this makes sense, but I never really got how "standing" on your (virtual) head is "grief". I'm sorry, but that is always going to read like MMORPG gamers. Don't take the a few paper dolls so seriously.

Likewise I'm unclear on whether you want FBI to respond to an SL Denial of Service, or to people standing on Profoky's head.

[Prokofy Neva]

Um, Just, as you know you need an SL name to post here, you are banned.

It's an interactive social world, not a fucking war game. You may imagine you can behave with impunity to other human beings represented by avatars, and treat them like characters and NPCs in shoot-em-up games, but they are people socializing in an interactive world structured on civilization and peace, not war.

The Lindens need to understand that and keep people like you at bay, as you fail to be civilized.

They do that not only by endlessly designing tools for fools, but by having social policies as well -- and that is cost-free, and does scale. It scales by being replicatative. By setting an example. As good behaviour and its training has always scaled all over the world since time immemorial. It starts by Spike first verbally admonishing something he sees like that or even flicking the asshole off the server immediately, kicking the stupid puppy out the door for demonstrative griefing like that.

If the Lindens can't manage their own platform at least at that level, no FBI can help them; maybe the FBI should actually just shut them down, if they metastasize, provide a home for griefer groups to socialize, recruit, and hone their skills, and move on to other more lucrative and RL targets.

[M. Schell]

I don't mean to fear monger here, but I'd stay way out of the way from these guys. I read enclopedia dramatica on occasion and they have a nasty habbit of causing a world of hurt should they discover personnal information.

I'd rather not have death threats all night and day like poor Alex Wuori (He's the one who reported 4chan to faux news)

Perhaps this will blow over and they'll become constructive like W-Hat. Baku is a very funny sim, and secondlife safari always brightens up my week.

My only concern is I dont think these guys are in it for laughs like the goons. I think they want to be assholes.

[Just Some Guy]

People like me? Such presumption! And here I am championing the rights of all to interpret the new reality as they choose.

> If the Lindens can't manage their own platform (...) maybe the FBI should actually just shut them down

Yeah luckily, it really doesn't work that way in this country.

You're suffering from an undiagnosed case of "immersion dysfunction".

[John Smith]

I wonder if they'll do what W-Hat did and only target furries and sexclubs. Furnation going down didn't really bother me too much and if these guys are new, they won't even be able to do that.

W-Hat were masters of the art. Griefers yes, but if you weren't a target and if you had a sense of humor, the goons were hardly a grave threat to the grid.

Besides, I think there is enough anti-griefing technology on the market to prevent any real threat. Psitec and Invisibot all work well.

To top that off, these guys probably don't have the nerve to enter sims like Tethys, Dorien (Formerally the Woofer) or Badnarik and thats where I hang out.

If they want to play in the big leagues, I say they arm up and bring it on. Let the AN, Mercz, SLSN and god knows who else take care of 'em.

[Brennan Planer]

Linden Lab can't close the Grid, they'd have to refund everybody that pays Tier.

The Green chat is coming from Objects, Since Objects can send IM's and you can name Objects whatever you want that is what they are doing.

[Daniel Smith]

Has it never entered your mind that they are doing this simply to get a reaction out of you? ever think that they are timing this in such a manner as to make you react in exactly the way they want you to react?

[Khamon Fate]

Objects can send IMs?

[Prokofy Neva]

Khamon, yes, indeed they can. At least, they can send spam into chat, bypassing the normal IM system.

Try to listen to the simple thing I'm telling you here, and suspend your disbelief for a second.

I've already explained it in detail.

First, I notice my email filling up with offline IMs -- those are IMs sent to me inworld by SOMETHING -- an object that sends a message, say a rental box expiring or being paid, or a person IMing me.

But this time, there is no object on my land of my own that could be expected to send me messages, or an object I've paid, that could send me messages but an object with a name, "Mia Linden" or "Urizenus Sklar" etc which then has a line of obscene text or stuff about the grid being crashed, pool's out, etc.

That line of text is being sent remotely, by an object evidently on a sandbox. How do I know that? Because the offline IM contains this message:

The object 'Urizenus Sklar' has sent you a message from Second Life:
ATTENTION: THE GRID IS UNDER ATTACK, THE PN HAS CLOSED THIS POOL. ALSO COCKS.

= Urizenus Sklar is owned by GreySkall Barbosa
= http://slurl.com/secondlife/Deus%20Insula/197/172/20

so obviously, while the IM itself, without this extra bit of info at the end, looks like it is "from" Urizenus because it is seemingly him sending it, it is merely an object named Urizenus.

BTW, this new info addition by the Lindens was put into place to fight a previous griefing spate which involved sending notecards to spam accounts by remote. I was hammered by that, too.

Now do you get it?

And do you see that to have a script that can direct chat right into someone's chat space, bypassing the usual IM interface, i.e. not showing as a blinking IM, not from an object they own or paid or interacted with, by remote, from an object owned by a third-party -- do you see what that represents to the grid?!

Brennan, duh, it's coming from objects. But objects do not NORMALLY send you chat ACROSS SIMS like that DIRECTLY into your chat history/space. They come in *IM boxes* duh. That's what shows you this is a hack.

Gosh, Daniel what a fucking UNIQUE fucking thought. If you don't get my philosophy about this, which is to expose them *anyway* because they need to be exposed, not because I'm a pin-cushion that helps "ouch" when pricked, then you are too stupid. It's over your head. Move along.

Gosh an awful lot of Smiths here I don't think are in the list.

[Khamon Fate]

Sorry, I hadn't groked that there were actual objects inworld sending the messages but was under the impression that they were being streamed into the system from remote, IRC-type machine using the open library or such.

[Kryss Wanweird]

Prokofy,

I see only two solutions possible for your griefing attack problems:

1- You report till exaustion these incidents to LL. Then, LL can access these ppl internet providers and request them banned from the service. Banning, alts, IPs, none of this will be effective. Once these people are banned from there internet service, they would have to find another inet provider. It would make their lives more difficult, but they still could come back.

2- Implement some sort of mechanism where you could filter your Ims and other messages. So, you would ban everyone from sending you messages, exept ppl from your allow list. Now, for that it would be required analysis (to see the possibility of implementing such) an development (=$$).

[Prokofy Neva]

>were being streamed into the system from remote, IRC-type machine using the open library or such.

Indeed, that may be the case, too, given that the people are removed from the people list, but keep streaming, and even the objects are missing, and yet keep streaming. We know that the w-hats had opened up IRC relays for example into SL, seems like a simple thing.

Re: "LL can access these ppl internet providers and request them banned from the service."

This is one of those naive things that people say who have never observed how people roam around with disposable accounts, using wireless, using public terminals, using all kinds of things that would make it impossible to "ban them from their ISP". Just impossible.

Why would I go through all that trouble to filter a list? but see, that's the sort of thing the Lindens would do. Rather than trying to chase the providers -- you never know, some of them may be connecting through individual actual known accounts that in fact don't leapfrog around -- they cook up more and more tools. Soon every move we make will be accompanied by a blue screen asking us whether we want it or not -- like the constant captcha checking on facebook.

[Kryss Wanweird]

As I said, ban from ISP would make things more difficult. Of course they can use wireless and inet cafes, but, it would make things at least very uncomfortable. I doubt that these sl griefers are up to that. They are probably accessing from the comfort of their parents home.
As for the filtering Ims, its not any trouble at all. I find it very intriguing that lindens didnt implement this. You should only be able to receive Ims from friends list, as "default". And you should be able to opt if you want to receive messages from anyone or not. As well as messages from objects. After all, that is how other chat programs work (msn, yahoo, skype).

[Prokofy Neva]

Kryss, it really does get tiresome to keep pointing this out: some IPs are dynamic and keep changing and some people constantly use anonymizers; others don't change. More and more, DSL lines don't change; but it depends on the country and the provider as has been argued copiously and strenuosly on this blog and a million other blogs.

IP banning is not effective. It should be done more, possibly, and let those affected wrongfully appeal, but given that in a high-rise in a big city, 10 people might play SL and all be knocked out due to one griefer, it's not really so viable. And that's why we need to press the lindens about the hash-mark stuff, which is very hazy, and maybe deliberately so to be less specific to clue in griefers themselves.

I don't want a filtered world. Just because some asswipes are spamming the chat now, no reason to strait-jacket the world "like Yahoo". It is not the Internet or email. It's a world.

[Anonymoose Neegrah]

You are a fucking lunatic.

The cyber equivilant of filling your voicemail with phone button push beeps is not a DOS or terrorism, criminal, or violent.

Its a fucking MMO with no objective or levels.

Seek some therapy.

[Daniel Smith]

Prokofy, it's not about 'getting' anything at all. If you honestly think they are doing what you claim they are doing, go to the federal government with it.

I have been using the internet and various access programs and other services long enough to know when a person is attempting to provoke a specific reaction from me. Everything I have read concerning this group and your experiences with them shows the exact same signs.

Now, what list are you talking about? The list of users in Second Life? I already told you that I do not post using account names and that this is my God given name.

[Mexican_Pirate]

So wait, you took the time to sit down and write a >9000 page report on how the FBI should arrest people for screwing around in a video game?

[Prokofy Neva]

Daniel, you're really missing the obvious here. If this group was just a bunch of kids, and merely wanted to poke at me with a stick to get a reaction out of "an old granny with cats," they'd limit themselves to just poking me.

But...they harass scores of people, many of whom never speak up because they think if they do, it will worsen. They attack Lusk routinely due to the anti-furry hatred. They attacked Relay for Life just because they wanted to disrupt something getting a lot of attention that was good. This enabled w-hat to posture as goody two-shoes, and that's not lost on me, too, as another function of all of their SA/W-hat propaganda schemes.

No, this is a serious problem, concerted, planned, systematic, and I'm targeted because I make THAT point, not merely because I squawk when poked.

I don't believe it's your God-given name. God doesn't give names. Parents do. I don't see that there is sufficient evidence. Bye!