The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Worm creates havoc on Second Life

'Grey goo' gridlock

Customer Success Testimonial: Recovery is Everything

Virtual world Second Life was forced to shut up shop for around 15 minutes on Sunday to clean up after a computer worm attack brought servers run by parent company Linden Labs to a virtual standstill.

The worm resulted in spinning gold rings, of a type that appeared in the popular Sonic the Hedgehog games of the late 1980s, appearing all over the virtual world. Attempts by users of the virtual environment to interact with these rings ran scripts that created more of the artifacts. This eventually put an extra load on the Linden Labs servers that proved to be unsustainable.

After user complaints about server response times reached a crescendo, Lindon Labs suspended the service to all but its own clean up operators who rid the virtual environment of its infestation of so-called "grey goo".

The grey goo attack came days after controversy regarding a recent flap over a tool called copybot that could be used to replicate virtual goods without payment. ®

Ensure Ease of Recovery with Asigra’s Agentless Software

More from The Register

 breaking news
NSA PRISM snoop-gate: Won't someone think of the children, wails Apple
10,000 things probed, mostly about missing kids, Alzheimer patients, we're told
 breaking news
NSA PRISM-gate: Relax, GCHQ spooks 'keep us safe', says Cameron
Whatever they are up to, it's all above board, we're told
PRISM snitch claims NSA hacked Chinese targets since 2009
Snowden suddenly looks safer in Hong Kong after revelations
 breaking news
US chief spook: Look, we only want to spy on 6.66 BEELLLION of you
Americans assured they are not in the NSA's sights
Speech-to-text drives motorists to distraction
Will talking to you mean I crash into that car up ahead, Siri?
DHS warns of vulns in hospital medical equipment
Has your doctor's anasthesia machine been hacked?
 breaking news
'BadNews is malware' says outfit that found it
Google says code harmless but Lookout says code base is evolving
Panda-peddlers cuffed for chess gambling gambit
More porridge on the menu for Chinese coders after second offence
 breaking news
Yes, maybe we should keep hackers in the clink for YEARS, mulls EU
Watch out black hats, they just might throw away the key
Microsoft borks botnet takedown in Citadel snafu
Stupid Redmond kicked over our honeypots, wail white hats