Phishing Scam Viewer Worries Get Linden Lab's Attention

 

It's a sad fact that the Internet is full of scammers. And unfortunately some have come to Second Life.  There's been some news going around recently about one particular phishing scam: a viewer that will supposedly give you unlimited Lindens, and allow you to build anywhere.

Hello,

Are you tired of spending your hard-earned Linden Dollars? We've got an exciting solution just for you! Introducing our SecondLive Viewer, where everything is not only free but also open for endless possibilities.

• Unlock unlimited Linden Dollars (L$) for all your virtual adventures.
• Fly to unlimited heights.
• Build on any land of your choice, all for free.

But that's just the beginning.

Link: <Some URL, typically a tinyurl link>

We're sincerely thankful to everyone who joins us in our mission to make SecondLife completely free. Don't miss this incredible opportunity.

Best Regards.

Most residents would recognize right away these claims are bogus. Viewers can't create Linden dollars, only Linden Lab's computers can do that. One would have to hack into them, and keep hacking to get the virtual money, which would not only be extremely difficult, but easily discovered and traced. Nor can your viewer determine which land you can build on - the permissions of who can and can't are stored in the servers.

Firestorm would express worries of copybot viewers last month before I personally started hearing about the forementioned scam. The scam itself I first heard about when a few people passed me a link to a post made by FelixWolf on GitHub, who would be identified by Inara Pey of Modem World as Chaser Zaks of Team Firestorm who "risked taking a look under the covers of the code that is supplied."

What the viewer actually does is run a program called builddata.bat on your computer, which installs a number of remote administrative toolkits (or RATs). Once your machine is infested with these RATs, the scammer can:

Steal your Linden dollars and go through your inventory

Steal your password and hijack your account, and whatever they do, people (and Linden Lab) will think it's you.

Go into your computer and steal/delete your files.

 

Steal your banking and credit card information, and steal your real-world money, and possibly ruin your credit.

 

Discover real-life information on you, such as your city and street address. 

 

Activate your camera and take pictures of you and the contents of your room. If they get your real-life location, they may know where to find valuable items to steal. 

Last Thursday, Linden Lab would feel the need to remind it's residents of the dangers of phishing scams in general, "Ensuring A Secure Second Life Experience." It brought up this particular viewer, "

It is important to remember that downloading software from unknown sources has a very real risk associated with it. You could unintentionally allow someone to monitor your keystrokes or even gain complete control over your computer. It has the potential to expose not just your Second Life password, but all other important information you have on your computer. ... Be wary of suspicious links or attachments sent by other users. These may be attempts to compromise your account or computer. ... Only download and install the official Second Life viewer, or an approved Third-Party viewer directly from the links provided by our site."

 

So once again, a reminder that one needs to be a little wary when going about Second Life (and the Internet in general), and don't let yourself get a RAT infestation. 

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

Two User-Made Maps of Second Life

   

Lately the map function of Second Life has been glitched, a fact that somewhat complicated our reporting of the new sims in Bellisseria last week. For a number of residents, these glitches can mean getting around is more complicated and takes longer. And as of now, Linden Lab has no idea when these issues will be fixed. But two people took matters in their own hands with resident-made maps, which can be accessed on a web browser. 

One is the Eddy O'Farrel map, found on http://maps.eddyofarrel.com/. The other is the Chaser Zaks map at http://secondlife.softhyena.com/map/. The Chaser Zaks map is more versatile as one can zoom out for a "world map" view showing all of the continents. While it has a "find on map" listed on the right, it doesn't seem to do anything. The first map may change in the future as Eddy plans to update it, "I realise it's probably not that much use right now, particularly as there isn't (yet) any way to search for/load any particular region or area of the map, but I will add more functionality in the next few days if anyone thinks they would actually find it useful."

Neither map can see the new sims, which only show their names. On both maps, the land is still invisible.

Hopefully the Lindens and Moles will fix the Second Life map soon. Until then, hopefully these maps made by residents can help.

Source: Daniel Voyager 

Bixyl Shuftan