Shark Attack In Montecito Bay

 

 Actually, it's Becky Nosferatu and Emorald having some fun with pool noodles at a pool party on Saturday the 19th to celebrate the opening of Becky's new water ride. More on the story later. 

 

Cartoon of The Day: Attack of The Gingerbread Men

 

 

 Taken while shopping. One lady had some little gingerbread men with angry expressions whacking her foot with candy canes. Why would they be upset? I could think of one reason.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

Internet Archive "Wayback Machine" Hacked

 

For users of the Internet Archive, also called the "Wayback Machine," Thursday October 10 was an unpleasant surprise when users discovered the site was offline.  What happened was the website was hacked. When people logged on, instead of the normal page, they saw this message:

Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!

 

Bleeping Computer would say, "The text 'HIBP' refers to the Have I Been Pwned data breach notification service created by Troy Hunt, with whom threat actors commonly share stolen data to be added to the service."

 

The nature of the hack seems to be in dispute. Some are calling it a Directed Denial of Service attack. Others are calling it a data breach that "stole a user authentication database containing 31 million unique records."

 

Forbes quoted a cybersecurity expert as saying, "“Hacking the past is usually technically impossible but this data breach is the closest we may ever come to it. ... The stolen dataset includes personal information but at least the stolen passwords are encrypted."

 

Forbes would also say "While the identity behind the data breach exposing 31 million users remains unclear, the pro-Palestinian hacktivist group Black Meta has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks that took down The Internet Archive." 

Sources: Forbes, Bleeping Computer.com, Cyber News  

Bixyl Shuftan

Meanwhile, Back In Rust: Seasons Beatings

 

 

 A number of my virtual neighbors are still going at it in the Rust survival MMO on the Angels server. To make things a little more interesting, Umbra had a mod put in that sends loose zombies every few nights. But this month, they're a bit different. They come out wearing red coats, red stocking hats, and sporting fake white beards. But these guys aren't really Santas, but Krampuses. And they're here not to deliver gifts, but to deliver punishment in the form on knives, pitchforks, and chainsaws.

 

It takes several shots, or a few to the head if you're good, to bring then down. Searching the bodies, you can grab the weapon they were using, plus a few other various items.

 

It's unclear if there will be a special challenge later this month or not. But it is looking more likely that in-game we're just getting coal under the tree.

 

Bixyl Shuftan

 

Protest Against Russian Invasion of Ukraine in Moscow Island, And Other Support For Ukraine in Second Life

 
On Wednesday February 23, Russia launched a full scale invasion against it's neighbor of Ukraine. The result has been protests across the world against the unprovoked act of aggression ordered by Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and in support of the Ukrainians. But for those trying to protest within Russia, the results have been the demonstrations broken up by police and the protestors arrested.

Within Second Life, there have been some protests against the invasion as well. On Friday February 25, I got a tip of one. It was appropriately enough at the Moscow Island sim, which is known for having a build of the Kremlin and one of Lennin's tomb. Near the tomb, I saw several avatars. One was flying a sizeable Ukrainian flag. Another looked bloodied and was wearing a blue and yellow dress, the colors of the Ukraine's flag. And there was one girl wearing a Putin mask, AnuAmun (AnuAmun Alchemi). "Путин должен уйти!" The girl shouted, "Putin needs to GO!"

Going over to her, I asked if there were more people here earlier. "People do come and go," Anu told me, "Some of us are gonna keep avatars here for as long as possible. There's no sim for Ukraine that I know of. And this is the only one related to Russia that looks official enough, since the actual Red Square has been closed in real life. There should be more people here. Getting the word out may help."

The protestor went on, "I have friends - in Russia, that fear going out in the street because of the repercussions. For some the responsibility, even though not directly theirs, weighs them down strongly. And internationally no one is placing blame with the Russian people. They are all prisoners to a criminal organization ran in part by Vladimir Putin. The economical sanctions imposed by the west are going to hurt the spectrum of the population in Russia that already hurts economically. It's the sons and daughters of Russia that are loosing their lives for the personal financial growth of Putin and the ones around him. And 60,000 Ukrainians have crossed the border into Poland and Romania in the past day. 

"For Ukraine this is an existential crisis. People remember how the 'liberating army' forgot to leave after the end of WW2. No one diminishes the importance of Russia and it's sacrifice in WW2. But this is 2022. Ukraine is an independent nation that should and must choose it's own future. On a personal level - I am just of the opinion that Putin does not actually care about the lives Russia will loose, or the lives or Ukrainians or even Ukrainian-Russian ethnics in the east. His interests are in the control of however much territory he can get at the negotiating table - including the gas fields in eastern Ukraine and Odessa. And it's a bit hypocritical criticizing America or the UK for being imperialistic and then turning around and actually doing it. Little men with big egos throughout history have shaped and reshaped maps on the bodies and with the blood of the innocent and the young - this is no different. We're better than this!"

When I mentioned I was going to keep the anonymity of the protestors in the article aside from those who gave their okay, Anu told me in her case it was fine, "I am ok - in the West.  Also I am not Russian or Ukrainian , by birth I am Romanian. I do have countless friends in both countries. We're neighbors after all. And neighbors help each other, they don't invade each other.

Dropping by the next day, I noticed the protest had been moved to a corner of the sim away from Lenin's Tomb, and was smaller in number. I got a message from Anu, "We were removed from the sim! I filed a report, mass removal for protesting." So it appears the sim owner was no fan of the protests.

Later on, someone passed me a notecard, written by a Stephen Yuvensky, calling on people to support a number of Second Life stores owned by Ukrainians, "Ukrainian owners of the SL stores likely won't be able to create new releases in the nearest future. So I suggest supporting them by visiting their MPs and inworld stores ..." The notecard had a list of store links on Google Docs (link here). "Please note that none of the following owners asked for this list. It's fully a desire and idea of community to show our support! If you know any other designers who are in Ukraine please let me know for them to be added." More on the notecard can be read in a New World Notes article. 

I would also be told about a set of Ukrainian flags (flagpole, wall mounted, desk, etc) that was being given away by Lupinia Studios, owned by Natasha Petrichor (earlier, we wrote about her Frolicking Deer Cay). You can get the flag set/fatpack for free at Marketplace (link) or inworld or practically free at 1L at Braunworth (127/245/179) and Tofte (173/120/146). Someone would also pass me a free and shareable flag.

There's quite a bit of support for Ukraine in Second Life. So we may have more on the subject soon.

For more information on the invasion of the Ukraine, one can check these links at Fox News, CNN, and the BBC.

Sources: Wikipedia, Reuters

Hat tip : CLEOPATRA Xigalia

Bixyl Shuftan
 

The End Of The Ice Cream At Luskwood

Since late August, the "Big Tree" at Luskwood had a dark dysutopian look, with toxic-looking water, grafitti, propaganda from a "Council" with leaflets proclaiming "rebellion" occasionally plastered on them, and a suspicious-looking ice-cream factory. There would be two more bulletins from the Council, one resembling L Ron Hubbard's Sea Organization advertisements, the other looking like Soviet propaganda.

On Saturday October 26 at 8PM SL time was a "Victory Day" party. As no one from the Newser was there, and there are no known pictures of the event, all that there is to go on what happened are the scenes of wreckage at the Big Tree, with clean water flowing this time, and eyewitness reports. There are multiple reports of a giant crab having wrecked the place, although one man claiming to be with the rebellion was saying he had a hand in the ice cream factory exploding, claiming that the substance was flammable. There was no sign of the crab, other than a much smaller one skittering around.

And the "Council?" Reports on what happened to them vary, from getting killed at the event to hospitalized. but it appears their rein over the oldest active community in Second Life is now over.

Note: There was no actual griefing. This was part of a plotline by the residents of Luskwood.

Bixyl Shuftan

More Login Troubles

It's been a frustrating week for Second Life residents. On Sunday, people had trouble logging in over the course of the day. On Wednesday, April Linden admitted it was a Distributed Denial of Service attack. But the trouble happened again that night for a couple hours. And once again on Thursday, there were people getting disconnected and unable to log on, at some times worse than others.


We are currently experiencing issues with log ins that is currently being investigated. Residents may experience log outs at this time. Please continue to check this blog for updates.

The chatter I heard in local chat and group chat online, as well as a thread of the forums, was full of irritated comments. More than one wished the "script kiddies" would be caught and thrown in the slammer. Catching DDoSing hackers is difficult, but it can be done. A couple months ago, two were arrested after being exposed. In April, what was claimed to be "the largest DDoS website" was shut down, the hackers doing the deeds for hire, boasting they had been behind six million such attacks.

Sources: CSO, Forbes 

Bixyl Shuftan

April Linden Confirms Sunday DDoS Attack

 Second Life residents often found themselves disconnected and/or had trouble logging in. On Wednesday afternoon, April Linden announced in the Tools and Technology part of the official forums that it was the reason some residents suspected: A Directed Denial of Service attack.
On Sunday,

Hello amazing Residents of Second Life!

 

A few days ago (on Sunday, October 28th, 2018) we had a really rough day on the grid. For a few hours it was nearly impossible to be connected to Second Life at all, and this repeated several times during the day.

 

The reason this happened is that Second Life was being DDoSed.

 

Attacks of this type are pretty common. We’re able to handle nearly all of them without any Resident-visible impact to the grid, but the attacks on Sunday were particularly severe. The folks whothat were on call this weekend did their best to keep the grid stable during this time, and I’m grateful they did.

 

Sunday is our busiest day in Second Life each week, and we know there’s lot of events folks plan during it. We’re sorry those plans got interrupted. Like most of y’all, I too have an active life as a Resident, and my group had to work around the downtime as well. It was super frustrating.

 

As always, the place to stay informed of what’s going on is the Second Life Grid Status Blog. We do our best to keep it updated during periods of trouble on the grid.

 

Thanks for listening. I’ll see you inworld!

 

April Linden

 
Second Life Operations Team Lead

 

But Second Life's troubles weren't over quite yet. Later that day in the evening hours, it happened again, residents getting logged off and unable to log back in. Yours truly was able to log back in after a few hours. There was talk about another DDoS attack by some residents. But the Grid Status Report didn't show any problems.

Hopefully that's the last of the trouble this week.

Hat Tip: Inara Pey

Bixyl Shuftan

Barney Helps Alien Invasion at Zeta Valley

Remember when the Zeta Valley Club had to deal with an alien invasion? It seems the aliens came back and they had an ally: Barney the Dinosaur.

 "Bix, you missed the epic Barney battle," Geerkil told me. "Yes what a war," LS Raccoon added. "Happens when you are not here to cover it. the aliens came back." Apparently Clockwork Jackal and his friend Biohazard were dealing with a second force of aliens, smaller than the first one that hit a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, more trouble showed up. "Then all hell broke loose," Geerkil told me. What was the form of the hell? It was Barney.

Yep, the purple dinosaur who sings songs that brainwash little kids into loving him and sends adults running away screaming came to the club as the fighting with the aliens started up. The purple horror would be a nightmare in itself. The good news, no one had to deal with the accused music that works on the brains of adults like sandpaper and has proved an effective interrogation method at Guantanamo Bay. The bad news, he was sporting a weapon, and joined the fight by firing at the club's defenders.

"Barney armed with a grenade launcher took on two foes," Geerkil told me, "Barney was defending the aliens." "Yeah, he was battling Biohazard and Clockwork," JB Raccoon added.

Clockwork and Biohazard might have been able to repulse the aliens with firearms alone. But with the dreaded purple monstrosity added to the assault force, it was decided there was no choice but to use their weapon of last resort: a mini-nuke. So like the first battle with the aliens a few weeks ago, this battle ended with a mushroom cloud over the club. When it cleared, the aliens, and the purple nightmare were gone. By morning, the radiation levels were back down, and all damage was repaired.

While these particular aliens may have been disposed of, Barney is assumed to have survived the nuke. Such abominable evil has a way of surviving to strike again.

Image Credit: Tech Adams

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

"Unprecedented" Cyberattack Hits Thousands of Computers In 99 Countries

A massive cyberattack has hit at least 75,000 computers in 99 countries in the past few days. Described as "unprecedented" in scale, the attacks have been infecting both individuals and institutions from home computers to government agencies to businesses to hospitals. In Great Britian alone, at least 48 hospitals, clinics, and other health institutions were affected. Although some surgeries were postponed, there are no reports of deaths yet related to the hacking.

Reports of the malware, called "WannaCry" began coming in on Friday. What happens io infected computers is the files are locked and a picture appears on the screen demanding $300 US dollars worth of Bitcoin within three days for the key to unlock the computer. Unlike typical malware attacks that rely on tricking computer users into opening email attachments or clicking on links, WannaCry is a worm that attacks computers through active online connections through vulnerabilities in system software. WannaCry locks up files, looks for other vulnerable computers to infect, then deletes itself. Most computer experts recommend treating the files as lost, with only the backup files on external hard drives, if any, as recoverable. It is not recommended that people pay the criminals as in past cases of ransomware, the criminals almost never provided any key to recover lost files. It is believed that the reason Bitcoin is the method of payment demanded is because it's transactions can't be traced.

In an ironic twist, the worm may be based on a spyware tool created by the NSA to snoop on people's computers, designed to take advantages of vulnerabilities in Windows software that it had discovered. The program was leaked in April by computer hackers whom had discovered it. The agency will neither confirm or deny their program had anything to do with WannaCry. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union called this "deeply troubling," saying the NSA should have notified Microsoft of the vulnerabilities instead of taking advantage of them, "These attacks underscore the fact that vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and criminals around the world. Patching security holes immediately, not stockpiling them, is the best way to make everyone's digital life safer." Others put the blame less on the NSA and more on institutions for being too slow to update systems, the attack happening two months after Microsoft had a patch available.

One British computer security blogger halted one strain of the malware by accident. Known as "Malware Tech," he decided to investigate the attack, and after an all-night session noticed the strain was trying to contact a specific web address every time it infected a new system. Seeing it was unregistered, he bought it for eight Pounds ($10.69 USD) to see where the attacks were happening. But in doing se, he accidentally triggered a "kill switch" for the strain. But there are still other strains of the worm out there.




A reminder that the computer world is full of dangers.

Sources: BBC, Arstechnica, Nerdgasm

Bixyl Shuftan

A Flower To Remember The Fallen At Brussels

Late last month, Islamofacist terrorists stuck again, this time in Brussels Belgium, killing more than thirty and injuring hundreds. Previous attacks of terror have inspired responses large and small in Second Life. Recently, I was handed this attachment, a carnation colored black, red, and yellow, the colors of the Belgian national flag.

It's possible we'll be seeing these around again on July 21, as it's Belgium's Independence Day, or "National Day" as they call it.

Cartoon of the Day

Kikas Barbenco, a friend of Gemma Cleanslate, is normally seen with her partner Marmaduke Arado, often in one of their "wearable art" performances. Like me, she can see the humor in a variety of situations. So when she dropped in the Newser beach party with this attachment, it was an instant scene for a cartoon.

Bixyl Shuftan

Release of "Warlords of Draenor" Marred by Denial of Service Attack

For months, fans of "World of Warcraft," the most subscribed to MORPG, looked forward to it's latest expansion, "Warlords of Draenor." Due on Thursday November 13, a number who had let their subscriptions expire signed back on. In October, Blizzard announced membership of the game had climbed to 7.4 million, a 600,000 increase over it's June total of 6.8 million. So on the day of the release, people got their copies in game stores or downloaded them straight from Blizzard, and logged on ...

And for many, they found out they couldn't get in!

The most populated of the servers were locked. At times *all* of them were locked. This mean that anyone trying to get in would instead be placed in a queue and made to wait until enough players who were already in had logged off. This could sometimes take an hour or longer to the chagrin of players.

So what happened? Part of the problem was so many players trying to log on at once, as has been the case with each expansion release which has seen some troubles. But as it turned out there was another element. Blizzard's World of Warcraft servers were the target of a huge  Denial of Service attack. According to WoWInsider, the attacks were traced to China. The assault reportedly continued into the early morning the next day.

In no way is Blizzard responsible for the server outages on this scale - responsibility rests with the script kiddies and bot net controllers. It's hard to know just how big this attack is, but with the sustained issues it's causing and the severity of response from Blizzard, it's safe to assume that it's BIG. Battle.net is a hardened Internet service that has withstood onslaughts like this before. For it to fail at such a critical juncture is nothing but catastrophic for the short term, and could have long term implications.

Among Blizzard's actions were lowering the maximum populations allowed on high population servers, which meant high waiting times for players there. The lower levels continued for the weekend. Saturday saw queues for a number of servers still, and Sunday saw at least one having to limit the people coming in part of the time.

There was no shortage of complaints in the thread about the launch update delays. While a few of the complaints were directed at the source of the attack, most in the first dozen pages were directed at Blizzard, many blaming not an attack by hackers but by bad planning,  "You are not prepared, Blizzard." "We're paying customers and can't even access our characters to play. We're being cheated out of our money!" "Microsoft's XBox Live service makes you look like rookies." There were a few wondering if the hacks were a made up cover story by Blizzard to excuse their problems. Some people joked about it, such as the "Hallowed Gaming" gaming satire website doing a parody article about Blizzard charging a fee to avoid the queues.

For those whom made it in, they still weren't completely in the clear. Many reported bugs and glitches, notably around the garrisons, one for the Alliance and one for the Horde, which players kept having to go to.

Blizzard has dealt with technical snafus before, notably the "plague" early in it's history in which high level players hit traveled to population centers and spread it to lower level players whom quickly succumbed in large numbers.

It's difficult to say exactly what the long-range consequences of the launch day hack attack will be. World of Warcraft has had huge numbers of devoted fans which have kept it going for the past ten years. But over time it has declined from the double digit millions it once had. While it was expected that people would drop out after a while after some time of exploring Draenor and other new content, it's possible the weekend of long server queues will stick to the minds of many who will let their game time expire earlier than planned, resulting in the number of players declining sooner and to lower numbers than it otherwise would have.

Sources: Geek.com, WoW Insider, WoW Forums 

Bixyl Shuftan

Meanwhile, Back in Azeroth (or Draenor)

And so it begins. After months of anticipation, "Warlords of Draenor," the latest expansion for the popular "World of Warcraft" Multiplayer Online Game, was finally available for sale Thursday November 13. And yours truly was among those getting it.

While there is much good to say about the game, unfortunately there was one major snag. It seems Blizzard was the subject of a major Denial Of Service attack originating from China. The result's been huge queues  for players waiting to log in, and a lot of complaints.

So stay tuned for more information while I try to get my Worgen, pictured above just moments after he stepped through the portal, about this world familiar to this WoW veteran, yet so new as well.

Bixyl Shuftan

Battle of Britian, 70th Aniversary

While most in Second Life were buzzing about the Emerald mess, some took the time to honor those who fought and died decades before. Tuesday August 24th marked the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the London Blitz. Residents gathered across three places on the Grid to remember those killed.

Read the story in Events.