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Crime Wave Thwarted in Second Life
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?"
Anti-spam thing.
Every time I post on Slashdot, it takes forever for me to Submit the post, because I get probed on a few ports (which timeout).
They're ports commonly used by proxies and such.
Peace sells, but who's buying?
Ummmmmmm...
Can someone explain to me why Quicktime is so fucked up? I'm dead serious, and I ask this as a mac user.
It seems like all the time there are new exploits for all different types of services (firefox exploits, myspace exploits, this, etc.) with one thing in common: It's not [necessarily] the services fault, it's Quicktime's. Is there something about the architecture of Quicktime that makes it particularly exploit friendly? Or does it not do enough checking to see if the file is malicious? Is Quicktime crack-friendly on both platforms or is it a shitty port like iTunes for windows and thus mostly windows only exploits?
I tend not to use Quicktime because it takes to long to load movies, (unlike VLC, which "streams" them and so it begins playing them almost immediately), but if any more exploits begin showing up for Quicktime, I may seriously consider not using it at all.
Can I tell you a little secret about life? It is pointless.
You are born, you die. In between you have to work a lot of hours to... well to postpone the dying part or at least make the dying part less unpleasant.
Luckily, in the west we have become good enough at postponing death that we have some spare hours in our days. So we got to waste them, some watch sports, some have sex, some read books and some play games.
It is ALL useless.
Blogging got to rank near the top of most useless activities and as such you are in no position to critize second life players. You are a pot, so keep quiet about the color of kettles.
I wish people were a little bit more honest about their personal time wasters. Friend of mine follows all the soccer tournaments in the world, yet thinks playing games is a waste of time. Eheh.
Stop blogging mate and save the world or accept that you are wasting your time just as much as people who care about some silly online game.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, that's true, but there are lot of regulations in the U.S dealing with bank security. Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) which deals with customer information and several others must be complied with. Other countries have them too; for example, J-SOX is Japan's SOX equivalent. This means that the bank gets audited, often by two sets of outside auditors, which helps security at least somewhat. Most banks and credit unions also often go through penetration tests and vulnerability assessments, if only to keep their examiners happy (as in, the NCUA, OTS, or whoever they happen to be chartered with.)
It's interesting to consider how these things may apply to Second Life and Linden Labs. At some point, some regulation must come into play. For example, if credit cards are processed, they must comply with the credit card industry's PCI standards. I am not saying compliance with these various regs is an answer to their problems, I just think it's interesting to consider how these apply to something non-traditional like SL.
Yes, Linden dollars do equate to real dollars. You can buy them, or you can create them by creating objects people buy or offering a service that other people pay for. Why do people buy? It's part of the game. Nearly every game out there costs money. Many are subscription. SL is similar. You can always play and not spend any real money at all. as most places to visit are free, and there is plenty of free items out there.
It's entertainment. People are willing to pay for entertainment.