Looking Back at Emeraldgate

Yesterday, Team Firestorm celebrated it's eighth anniversary party. All were happy with the celebration. But eight years ago, the team was rapidly formed in the middle of a scandal that was sinking the team behind the most popular viewer at the time: Emerald. Known as "Emeraldgate," it started in August 2010 when a key member of the development team took advantage of a weakness in the viewer code to launch a Denial of Service attack on the website of someone he didn't like. The aftermath was a drama in which one woman brought people together to lead a new team, while others ended up banned by Linden Lab.

Read the story in Events.

From the Ashes of Emerald ...

Just a few weeks ago, Emerald’s development team, officially known as Modular Systems, was doing very well. With Linden Lab’s official new viewer disliked by many in Second Life, they were the first, and most popular, of the third-party viewers. Probably about a third, some say almost half, of the residents were using the Emerald viewer. Having the respect and admiration of many, the few stories going around about the past of a few of the team members and possible code vulnerabilities got little attention.

Today, Team Emerald has fallen apart, and word on the Grid is it’s just a matter of time before Linden Lab blocks its ability to access Second Life.

Jessica Lyon whom resigned from team after what was branded a “hostile takeover” by the remnants, quickly organized a new one to produce a new viewer for Emerald fans.


A few days ago, I assembled a team of developers to work on a new viewer. Some who were originally Emerald developers, some who were not. All are respected reputable residents in the Second Life Community. The goal was simple, to provide users with what they want and do it transparently.

I’m am very proud to announce the launch of the Phoenix Viewer. This project, has started off simple, with it’s initial release of a safe clone of the Emerald viewer. Users want Emerald features, you shall have them.


It’s interesting to note Jessica included among the developers LordGregGreg Back, the developer whose resignation from the Emerald team marked the beginning of the end. So far, there is no conformation on his blog about his involvement, though he did hint he would be making another entry soon concerning Jessica’s actions.

Second Life Newser has already ran into a few people who have tried Phoenix and liked it. A peek at the comments suggested some have had a little trouble loading it. And of course there is the matter that Linden Labs has yet to give it its official seal of approval.

Here’s one review of the Phoenix viewer by “Natales” - Click Here

So will Linden Lab ban use of Emerald? Possibly, though pulling the plug on a popular viewer is a risky move. A fraction of the Emerald viewership refuses to let it go. It may be that they plan to let the word spread about alternatives to Emerald for a while, give the remaining Emerald users time to accept what happened and find a replacement. Then make an announcement they will block the viewer after a given amount of time.

Hamlet Au has had a few things to say about the Emerald mess. Among them, that the actions of Fractured Crystal bring up the debate on how to treat youngsters. He was reportedly 18. When 17 and 16 year old residents are allowed onto the grid, will they be allowed on development teams, and when they screw up will they be pilloried in the court of public opinion like adults? Then there’s the issue of Internet anonymity and business. Hamlet Au considered Linden Lab the only ones to trust in the mess as they were “an actual company with actual names.” Others feel this anonymity is still “the great equalizer,” allowing those with talent to succeed online even if in real life they’re a “horse-apple” shoveler. The issue will continued to be debated for some time.

As for Qarl Fizz, the former Linden who joined Emerald before the proverbial slop hit the cooling fan, he has yet to answer our request on his point of view of the team’s downfall. He may have just decided to stay out of sight for a while.

“This ain’t the end of Emerald, but you can see it from here.”

Bixyl Shuftan

The Emerald Team Part Ways

Yesterday, Arabella Steadham announced that the Emerald team would soon be folding it’s doors. Later, the post was amended, her saying there was “a hostile takeover was attempted by a portion of the Dev Team trying to gain unauthorized access to the Emerald servers without knowledge of the others,” Jessica Lyon fingered as leading this “takeover.” This was something of a surprise, as Arabella and Jessica appeared together on SL media to defend Emerald and give it's point of view together.

Jessica Lyon has started up her own blog, explaining her point of view.

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As of some time this morning, all access to the servers have been severed to all but Arabella Steadham and Lonely Bluebird. Neither me, nor any of the other Emerald Developers have the ability to put out releases at this time. Beyond the recent beta 2587, we also cannot certify the safety or validity of any future releases.

. . . . . . . . . .

Without access to the server and website, I am forced to make a very difficult decision as I will not allow myself to be held accountable to anything that happens from this day on in regards to Emerald.

With that said, I here by officially resign from the Emerald Viewer Project.

I no longer have access to post on the modular systems blog, so I have created a temporary personal blog here http://jessicalyons.wordpress.com . It will be on this blog where I will post future developments with myself and possibly the remaining Emerald Developers. We are considering, (only considering) the possibility of creating a new viewer, to be on the TPVD, picking up where Emerald left off. IF we do, you will have the same features as Emerald Viewer. The motivation for this would be purely to give the existing loyal Emerald users a TPVP compliant alternative with a fresh future.

I would like to thank, all of our dedicated and loyal users for your support through these difficult and confusing times. I would also like to thank our support team, for all of their hard work and relentless dedication to the emerald viewer project and to helping our users. Also to thank our beta testers who helped Emerald viewer be a quality product.

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The final (modified) Emerald Team post is Here.

Jessica's new blog can be found Here.

Both posts were soon followed by dozens of comments. Some were well wishes and thank you notes. Others expressed sadness that it ended this way, and wondering if there would ever be a viewer as good that they could use. And there were a few curses tossed in the direction of Linden Labs.

Unrelated to the team split, there was also an announcement in the Emerald blog of a griefer trying to "pervert the in world open Emerald viewer group. ... I tried to close the group down. Unfortunately, I could not do this in time, so many will now no doubt read disturbing notices put out ..."

Some residents vow to continue to use Emerald. Others are looking for alternatives, Snowglobe and Imprudence appearing to get the most attention (from my point of view). And there are those sticking with, or heading back, to the old SL viewer.

And so, the team started many months ago to provide an alternative to the official Linden Labs viewers, an alternative that won the hearts of many residents of Second Life, has come to an end. For now, the Emerald Viewer is still allowed to be in use. If or when this will change is unclear.

Bixyl Shuftan

BREAKING NEWS: "The End" for the Emerald Team

On the Emerald Blog today, the team posted that they had made the decision to fold. Two reasons were given, Linden Labs' demands that three "key members" of the team be dismissed, and an attempted (unsucessful) takeover from within. They stated before closing, there will be one final version of Emerald released, "the viewer we’ve been working on for the past six months. It would be a shame to let the efforts of the developers who put so many unpaid hours into this project go to waste."

This is the opportunity for a fork project to develop and create a TPV version of snowstorm, which is what Linden Lab really wants. I am aware of a number of small projects underway now, and I wish them the best, the very best in their endeavors.

For you, the user, what this means is that there will not be any further releases of the Emerald Viewer after today. The existing releases will continue to operate until Linden Lab decides to terminate their access and end Emerald once and for all.

This virtual world is ever changing and must be, otherwise it will stagnate. This incredible environment will continue.

To view more, Click Here.

More Developments on “Emeraldgate”

In the days following Linden Labs taking the Emerald Viewer down from its list of approved viewers, and the decision of Fractured Crystal to resign on Sunday August 22nd, the controversy has yet to die down.

Probably the most clear example of this was the “Tonight Live” talk show that evening. The show was plagued not only by technical difficulties, but there were also a number of likely griefers at the sim, judging by both Paisley’s observations of day-old avatars with replicating scripts, and my own when I got there of seeing what at times resembled a peanut gallery. Paisley ended up having to do the show in a secret location, with the studio audience facing a gray wall on the set labeled “REHEARSAL.” This was an action Paisley and her staff hated to, but as the hostess stated, “the show must go on.”



On Tuesday, Linden Lab finally ended its silence about Emerald since removing it from it's third-party viewer list without explanation. In it’s “Malicious Viewers and Our Third-Party Viewer Policy,“ It clearly labeled the action on Emerald’s rival a denial-of-service attack:

We have removed Emerald from the list of third-party viewers, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.

We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. ... The third-party viewer directory is designed to be largely self-policing, but we take our responsibility to act very seriously when problems come to our attention.

Contrary to some of the rumors flying around, Emerald users will still be permitted to use their viewers, at least for now. At worst, Linden Labs will block the use of Emerald viewers. Tales of users under threat of suspension for using Emerald are false.

Despite the problems, some residents continue to use Emerald. Others have switched to the new 2.0 viewer, but some of them doing so reluctantly and open to alternatives. One such alternative that keeps being mentioned is the “Imprudence” viewer, available in Windows, Mac OSX, and Windows. It’s been described as more useful to builders than the new LL Viewer, though not perfect. LordGregGreg, the ex-Emerald developer whose exit marked the beginning of the controversy, recently offered an alternative of his own, “produced in a way where all binaries are either provided from a well known trusted source (such as linden lab or openjpeg), or myself,” the “Emergence Viewer.”

Ex-Linden Qarl Fizz, who joined the Emerald team just before the denial-of-service attack, gave no response to a request to be interviewed by SL Newser. On New World Notes, he described himself as being “pleasantly surprised with how the Emerald people are handling the mess.”

Modular Systems, the creators of the Emerald Viewer, stated, they “received a large list of requirements and conditions from LL. ... At this point, I can safely say that we fully intend to address and fulfill ALL of them as soon as we possibly can. ... Although some of these conditions will be very difficult, we feel they are reasonable considering recent events. Due to that difficulty however, some will take more time than others to fulfill. It is a big list of things that we need to do and we will be providing LL with a time frame on each individual item ... Once we have completed these items to the full satisfaction of Linden Lab, we intend to re-apply.”

Sources: Linden Blog, Tonight Live, New World Notes,

Bixyl Shuftan

Alleged DoS Attack by Emerald, Development Team Member Resigns - UPDATE: Emerald Removed from Linden Labs' Third Party Directory Page

In recent days, Modular Systems, the developers of the popular Emerald Viewer, has come under the spotlight. Last week, one of their team, LordGrerGreg, resigned, citing abuses by the team, notably slipping in code that made the viewer vulnerable to intrusion, “Emerald is no longer what it was to me. I have been dedicating ... my time to the project for nearly two years now, and it’s been difficult to see it go the way it has.”

This news got less attention after a few days when Qarl Fizz, the former Qarl Linden, joined the team. With Qarl’s impressive resume, one of Second Life’s more enthusiastic supporters on the Linden Team and having worked on big-budget movies, this helped Modular System’s claim that LordGregGreg was simply a “minor ex-developer” whom had been unable to agree with his teammates, “You can be assured that Emerald will maintain it’s high standard of integrity, honesty and ethics that have contributed to it’s development.”

Then on August 20, news spread about the website of a rival viewer getting shut down because of action by Emerald viewer’s makers. People began charging Modular Systems of engaging in a Denial of Service attack, involving everyone online whom was using their viewer by using vulnerabilities in the code to make the unaware users’ computers part of the attack. Such a move would be clearly be a violation not just against the terms of service of just about every Internet service provider, but also against the law. Wikipedia stated, “they can be a serious federal crime under the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act of 1996 with penalties that include years of imprisonment.”

Modular Systems admitted to “shenanigans” on “a blog owned by a creator of a malicious viewer,” by denied they did such a move, “The method for doing this was to add links to the Emerald log in page linked to said blog. Each time anyone logged in, our page loaded up and also the other page loaded up – simply to show off our volume of traffic. This was not a DDoS. This was a poor attempt at boasting that failed miserably. Once we discovered this, these links were deleted and the dev concerned was disciplined.”

Today on Sunday August 22, Fractured Crystal made an announcement on the Modular Systems blog, admitting to supporting the code that made Emerald vulnerable and calling what happened on “this most recent incident” the result of tinkering with the viewer due to boredom and then forgetting about it.

Fractured Crystal had been scheduled, along with Emerald teammate Arabella Steadman, on the treet.tv show Tonight Live this evening at 6 PM SL time.

Events concerning Emerald have been developing quite rapidly. Second Life Newser postponed writing about earlier developments either due to time constraints or waiting for more news.

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UPDATE: Checking Linden Labs' Third Party Directory, Emerald is gone from the list.

Bixyl Shuftan