"Busty Belles" Club Wrecked, But Rebuilding

 

A few months ago, the Newser wrote about the owner of the "Busty Belles" club, Jodi Eyre passing away. Despite her loss, the handover and continued operation of the venue went smoothly. 

 

Talking to Frost Beam (JD013 Resident), someone on the staff with build permissions leveled the place when they weren't getting their way, "the co-founder ... nuked it, when we were waiting for them to make up there mind on a few issues." A couple days later, the situation was better, "Mostly needing the help getting stuff, like the beach back up and we have our GM working on building new rental homes. On top of the co-founder taking the building the club was using, he also took the clubs beach and all the rental houses which had some people living in them. ...  I wasn't expecting himm to take all the rentals (frown) That made me feel really bad for making people homeless.

"My GM Tiffany had to rush build the new building for the sets.  But I think we still need some for other parts on the club, like the beach and the homes." Frost was optimistic, "When a founder or co-founder up takes the building a club is in, that normally spells out the end of it. We are still here, still rockin, and always welcoming in people. I kinda of treat this place like my home, and my staff and patrons are like my family." One nearby dancer, Domino Sorbet Presley (DominoPresleyTS Resident), commented, "Yah good thing we had hurricane relief. Whether we are here or somewhere else we won't quit."

 

So Busty Belles won't go bust any time soon.

 

On a final note, later this month on the 18th, Busty Belles will host a Making Strides fundraiser, a "Pink Ribbon" event, starting at 6PM SL time.  

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

Bay City's SL19B Exhibit In Flames

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Bay City's Marianne McCann recently contacted the Newser, pointing out a few photos she took in her "My Second Life" feed. It appears for Bay City, it's time at "The Birthday" had a firey end.

It seems before it was scheduled to be taken down, Bay City's Second Life Nineteenth Birthday exhibit was the scene of a "disaster," going up in flames, "Was this an accident, or sabotage?"

There was something stuck in the flames, "Could this giant gear be a clue?"

Marianne would only add an investigation was ongoing, not sure when the results would be announced.

Bixyl Shuftan
 

Second Life Hit By Large Scale DDOS Attack

Second Life has been under attack by trolls many times. But this time, hackers are the ones causing the trouble.

For the second day in a row, residents have had trouble getting inworld. People couldn't log in, or if they were already in, they'd be logged out. People had trouble bringing up the Second Life webpage as well as Marketplace. Yours truly couldn't get on until after 7PM SL time. Curiously, Firestorm was also described as being down. There was naturally speculation about the cause. One person wondered if one of the twelve employees Linden Lab recently let go had something to do with it. Others suspected a DDOS, or Distributed Denial of Service, attack.

Finally just after 11AM SL time, April Linden finally announced the cause, an unusually large DDOS, one that the Lab stated were "at a level that we rarely see."

As I’m sure most of y’all have noticed, Second Life has had a rough 24 hours. We’re experiencing outages unlike any in recent history, and I wanted to take a moment and explain what’s going on.
The grid is currently undergoing a large DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Second Life being hit with a DDoS attack is pretty routine. It happens quite a bit, and we’re good at handling it without a large number of Residents noticing. However, the current DDoS attacks are at a level that we rarely see, and are impacting the entire grid at once. 

My team (the Second Life Operations Team) is working as hard as we can to mitigate these attacks. We’ve had people working round-the-clock since they started, and will continue to do so until they settle down. (I had a very late night, myself!) 

Second Life is not the only Internet service that’s been targeted today. My sister and brother opsen at other companies across the country are fighting the same battle we are. It’s been a rough few days on much of the Internet. 

We’re really sorry that access to Second Life has been so sporadic over the last day. Trying to combat these attacks has the full attention of my team, and we’re working as hard as we can on it. We’ll keep posting on the Second Life Status Blog as we have new updates.

As I am writing this, I've been hearing that various online retailers have also been hit with DDOS attacks. Although the Grid Status Report suggests there are still problems, some are telling me they can get on again. Hopefully the issue will be resolved quickly.

Image Credit: Spooked Dreamscape

Bixyl Shuftan

Announcment: GeekSpeak "Cyber Wars" Discussion Saturday at 12 Noon

In this day and age, we are all connected in ways that we cannot measure or understand.  We have created a new cyber habitat but the old war and violence has followed us there.  We are not as safe as we thought we would be.  The lions have returned to the Savannah.

Last month’s attack on the USA showed us how easy cyber attacks can be.  Wars between states can be carried out online.  A few years ago, there was a virus roaming on the internet that was written to shut down a nuclear plant in Iran.  This is just one example that went public; there are many more predators out there that we do not know about.  Tomorrow someone could stop all traffic or close all factories.

What will happen if someone, an individual or a state, invents a super-virus?  Or if all important computers get infected with ransomware?

How much damage could a cyber war do?  How can we protect ourselves?  How threatened do you feel?  Bring your firewall to GeekSpeak and talk to us about it.

Some people have had problems teleporting to GeekSpeak.  Please contact Kathen Ohtobide if you cannot find us.
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Danmu/141/128/51

Originally posted in the SL Enquirer.

Commentary: Hackings On the ADI Combat Group

Since writing about the ADI combat sim in June, Theonlyjohnny Resident has continued to frequent the sim, engaging in a little first-person-shooter gaming with other residents. Unfortunately, the group has been the subject of some suspected hacking attacks. In his article for today, Theonlyjohnny expresses a few thoughts on the matter.

Read Theonlyjohnny's article in Extra.