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Crime Wave Thwarted in Second Life

Posted by Zonk on from the watch-what-you-walk-near dept.

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The Mercury News reports that a vulnerability in the way Second Life protects a user's money has been identified. Risks for users are reportedly limited because the researchers say the flaw can be quickly patched. The flaw exploits a known problem with Apple's QuickTime - when a virtual character passes by an infected object planted by hackers, the Second Life software activates QuickTime so it can play the video or picture. Hackers can direct the Second Life software to a malicious Web site that then allows them to 'take over the user's avatar and force it to hand over its Linden cash. Second Life is recommending that users disable streaming video playback in the Second Life viewer except when you are attending a known and trusted venue.' The hack raises tough questions for operators of virtual worlds. Should they be as secure as banks and guarantee the safety of money and property that characters in the world possess?"

16 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. short answer - No by timmarhy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not real people. look after your actual life for a change....

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    1. Re:short answer - No by sqrt(2) · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah! I can't even imagine what kind of losers would spend that much time on a website.

      I've never actually seen this "Second" life, and I can't imagine why people would spend real money on it, but apparently a lot of people do. It must be worth it to them for the entertainment value.

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    2. Re:short answer - No by iminplaya · · Score: 1, Insightful

      HEY MODS! That's not flamebait! I fully agree with the parent. Real worlds and virtual worlds don't mix. Learn some perspective and stop trying to pretend one is the other. Man! This is getting creepy!

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    3. Re:short answer - No by SJ2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Real worlds and virtual worlds don't mix" Alert the eCommerce sites, eBay better shutdown now.
      Can't have the virtual world mixing with reality can we?

    4. Re:short answer - No by iminplaya · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What kind of real items are you buying in Second Life? Furniture for your house? Food for your stomach? Yeah. That virtual steak sure was tasty. Clothes for the kids? He's not barefoot. He's got his shoes right there on his USB stick. Can't you see them? The frostbitten toes are just his imagination. IT"S A GAME! If somebody cheats, kick them off, undo, and move on. Jeeze, do you call the cops if someone doesn't pay the rent when he lands on your "Park Place"? Oh, I can see the Nigerian scam now. There's 3000 dollars in un-collected "GO" money. If you send me just $49 and your credit card number and bank account number, I'll send it right to you in six to eight weeks. Will my get out of jail cards work when the cops mash my door down and bust me with my bag of weed? You are crazy.

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    5. Re:short answer - No by timmarhy · · Score: 1, Insightful
      good thing i don't spend hours on slashdot.org then.

      A lot of people are really stupid to you know, like this guy calling for virtual worlds to involve bank security and liability. only from bloggers i swear...

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    6. Re:short answer - No by JustShootMe · · Score: 1, Insightful

      There's always a mod that mods these kinds of comments down as flamebait. It doesn't make them any less true.

      Personally, I don't at all see the appeal of "second life". If you're going to be involved in something that is just like real life, but is not real life, and is an inferior low resolution copy to boot, why not just go to a park and watch the squirrels play?

      Of course, I'm here commenting at 12:30 on a Sat. night, so I'm not exactly taking my own advice. But it's still good advice.

      I start to think more and more that second life is just another manifestation of the ongoing trentd for Americans to retreat into their own little worlds and live in as much fantasy as possible. Probably because life sucks so much...

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    7. Re:short answer - No by SJ2000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm just tired of people's crap about SecondLife when all they appear to know about it is crap they read, experience it properly then I'll respect your opinion. If this isn't the case then speak up, currently your analogies don't even parallel was occurs in SecondLife. All I did was take apart your previous post and rebutted, not really much to it other then that. What didn't you understand? I'll rephrase it

    8. Re:short answer - No by ronadams · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except that real money is involved in Second Life. There's more to it than just a game -- when money can be made and lost, the stakes and consequences are higher.

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    9. Re:short answer - No by sqrt(2) · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If I was spending real money on a hobby, I'd expect a reasonable amount of security. Don't even think farther than that. When you spend money online, don't you want it to be secure? That's the issue.

      I'm sure there exists casual SL players. Probably some that play even less than you spend on slashdot. You can easily spend hours and sink tons of real money on any hobby, if people want to throw it away on a virtual world that's their business. Some people play WoW, I can't understand that either, but a lot of my friends play it and really enjoy it. It's worth the time and money to them because it's enjoyable. Wouldn't be to me, and I'm guessing not to you either, but that's why we're not WoW subscription holders. If I was though, I'd expect a certain degree of security when handling my transactions, credit card info, and account.

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      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
  2. Not-so-virtual by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The hack raises tough questions for operators of virtual worlds. Should they be as secure as banks and guarantee the safety of money and property that characters in the world possess?"

    Considering that you buy Lindens with real currency, then yes. Yes, they should be just as secure, since it's real money you're dealing with.

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    1. Re:Not-so-virtual by icepick72 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But I buy monopoly money with real money and there's no need to guarantee the safety of it because I've purchased play money. Linden dollars don't do anything either outside the context of a game. You have your virtual and real worlds mixed up.

    2. Re:Not-so-virtual by cos(0) · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can buy anything with currency. The real test might be, does the government have an interest in protecting the integrity of Linden currency to the extent of US currency?

      Alternately, can one buy US currency with Linden currency? However, this test would merely cause theft of Linden currency to be a crime with "real" damages; it would not require the storage and management of currency to be as secure as with banks.

    3. Re:Not-so-virtual by bob.appleyard · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No guarantee of safety? If someone steals your property (ie. the game or its fake money) would the poilce not deal with it as theft? It's exactly the same thing with Second Life, someone buys a product (game money) and that is taken from them without consent. Just because you don't value their property doesn't mean it has no value.

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  3. Real life banks are not secure. by WK2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Real life banks are not secure. They are just as likely to be hacked as any other web site. In the U.S., they are FDIC insured, though.

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  4. SL's economy is a giant sinkhole anyway by Carbon016 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As someone who has been quite directly involved in Second Life (or at least griefing it), I know SL pretty thoroughly, and I especially know there are two attractions to Second Life: sex and money. They're readily interchangeable, and they're the only reasons anyone uses it, despite claims to the contrary by media-whorish Linden Labs. You're either renting land, throwing cash into a bizarro stock market, or going to a furry cybersex sim. News about security problems is common because there's so much money going through the system and a lot of people looking to exploit it, as well as a wealth of disorganized, terrible code.

    A bank called "Ginko" that recently went insolvent sent shockwaves through the economy lately. Yes - there are Second Life banks, (multiple) Second Life stock exchanges, and all sorts of economic institutions: however, the operators of these venues often don't know the difference between an interest rate and their shoe so most people that end up dumping their funds into them lose all their money. Some people have thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars tied up in the game. As the Linden (the currency of Second Life) is not based on anything, Linden Labs simply dumps currency into the market whenever they feel like it. So economic problems are pretty common. Guaranteeing anything is a difficult proposition for the companies running the games: most have simply said "the *unit of currency here* is not money, nothing is guaranteed" to avoid lawsuits when someone messes up and loses a grand because a sim went down. So it's a dangerous game and the only real winners in "investing" in Second Life are LL.