BREAKING NEWS: Second Life Hacked, Iranian "Cyberwarriors" Claim Responsibility

 

 ** Update : April Fool's! **

 

If you had trouble staying online yesterday, or couldn't access the website, you were not alone. The website was down for a short time, and for some time afterwards hard to access. People were also crashing more often and having trouble getting back online. 

 

But that wasn't the only trouble. Whole sims were hacked and covered with Iranian flags. There were also signs with pictures of hot dogs & ham and pictures of dogs, with the international "not allowed" sign over them. 

 

*Addition*: There are stories of a few women whom when knocked offline and finally able to log back in found themselves wearing a burka and found themselves unable to remove it until they relogged using another viewer. 

 

A group of self-proclaimed Iranian "cyberwarriors" took responsibility, saying this was part of their fight against America. 

 

There has been no official comment from Linden Lab, though there were some comments from individual Lindens. To read them, head to the forum thread here.  

 

 

SLife And Times: Dealing With Begging

 

 Probably every resident is familiar with them. All of a sudden, one of their groups opens up, and someone goes "Hey, can someone give me a hundred Lindens?" Sometimes they offer to pay it back. But of course they never to. It's a low-level con to try and get someone to send them a little money. Sadly it's often a hacked account, which at the very least means a lot of inconvenience as the target will be thrown out of most of his groups. At worst it means the hackee ends up permanently banned. But it's always an annoyance to everyone else in the group, the chat being filled with grumbles. This includes Bellisseria chat, which has seen it's share of begging.

But someone in Bellisseria chat found a creative way to respond, and make everyone else grin. 

Just after Midnight one evening, the following appeared on Bellisseria chat

 

[00:01] (Hacked Resident): Hey. Can someone lend me 100L me please? I promise pay it back tomorrow.

There were a couple growls. But an Ina (Jantina McGregor) had a creative response.

 

[00:01] Ina (Jantina McGregor): I have told you this before   We sincerely apologize but your loan application of L100 is rejected by Linden Bank Of SL due to your bad credit history. We request you consult one of our Financial Specialists to improve your credit score. Consultation fees are L500. Please don't hesitate to contact us. Thank you for banking with us :)

 

The result was a number of laughs and "LOL"s as the hacked account was ARed and booted. 

 

Soon after, there was an announcement in the Relay for Live Volounteers group by Selene Jashan

New Challenge!!

How many of you have seen  the bots in groups begging for 100L?   Lets make lemonade out of lemons and when you see that,  where ever you are,  toss that 100L into a kiosk because I'm SURE that is what the bot was intending!   Who will join me in this???

 

 Lets DO THIS!!

Selene would add in chat, "We just got over 500L from doing that just now !!   They hit the I Pink I can Group (laughter)" That got chuckles and praise, Trader Whiplash saying, "I LOVE LOVE LOVE this idea! And be sure to type in the chat  'I sent your 100 to the Amerian Cancer Society for you.'"

So the next time you get hit with a beggar, here's two things you can do.

Bixyl Shuftan

A Bad Week For Facebook and Twitch, Windows 11 Launched

It was not the best week for Facebook last week.  On Tuesday October 5, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook manager turned whistleblower, testified before Congress. She stated the company knew it's app Instagram could be hazardous to the mental health of teenage girls, and knew it was not doing enough to combat disinformation on it's social media website that contributed to the worsening political divide in the United States and led to the January 6 riot. While it could have taken measures to protect girls on Instagram and done more about misinformation on Facebook, it had not done so as the company didn't want to cut into it's profits, putting money over the safety of it's customers. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg would respond with a statement denying her accusations.

But then came more bad news in the form of a six hour outage of both Facebook and Instagram. While for most it was an annoyance, some small businesses have come to rely on Facebook for communication with their customers. Also affected were sets of Oculus VR headgear. The company would eventually offer an apology.  It's estimated that the company lost billions from this outage. Then on Friday, the company suffered another outage and once again Facebook and Instagram were down once more, another blow to it's reputation.

Facebook wasn't the only social media platform to face big trouble. On Wed Oct 6, there was a massive data leak targeting Twitch. Over 100 gigabytes of data was posted online on Wednesday October 6. This includes operational details that the company "fiercely guards," such as how many millions the top streamers made in revenue from broadcasting. "Aside from the salary details, the documents seems to contain the site's source code and even technical details for yet to be released products and platforms," Joe Tidy in an article on BBC News would say, adding if everything was confirmed it would be, "the biggest leak I have ever seen - an entire company's most valuable data cleaned out in one fell swoop." ThreatModeler founder and CEO Archie Agarwal would say of the data breach,"This is as bad as it could possibly be."

While there didn't seem to be any passwords included in the leaked data, it was listed as "part one," hinting there was more to come. Still, it is reccomended that Twitch users change their passwords anyway.

Tuesday October 5 was the release date of Windows 11. Six years ago, Microsoft was saying there would be only new installments of Windows 10. That has changed, and the company has launched a new version that promises to be "clean and fresh and simpler." If you're reluctant to change over to the new system, you'll have plenty of company. The list of machines the company says this version of Windows needs has been described as "ridiculously strict." In a review on PC Gamer, the writers thought Windows 11 had a few nice improvements, but nothing worth upgrading to the new system, and a number of reasons to wait. Officially, PC users have until October 2025 to wait. After that, Microsoft plans no more technical or security updates.

Sources: BBC News, PC Gamer, The Verge   

Bixyl Shuftan
  

Breaking News: Hacker Renames Hundreds of Accounts Trump and Clinton

*Update - April Fool's*

In a shocking move, a hacker was somehow able to gain access to Linden Lab's computers and rename several hundred accounts. It is believed he or she was about to seize control of the renaming process and used it to change the names of the residents. There were a number of males in motorcross clubs given names such as "Kissyfur" and "Cuddlebaby." And there were several professors in science groups given insulting names such as "Dunderhead" and "Flatearther." But the majority of the affected residents were accounts that were created after 2010, given the surnames "Trump" and "Clinton." This includes a few dozen in political groups, given the name of the political figure in the party opposite theirs.

Numerous residents have already spoken out in various forums, demanding Linden Lab fix their accounts. Several have already stated they will not return until their accounts are fixed. Linden Lab in response has stated they are considering activating the ability for residents to change their names early, though has not spoken on whether or not the residents affected by the hacking will have their account names restored for free.

For the official statement by Linden Lab, Click Here.

Hacked

Earlier this month, a warning was sounded in the Angels and Sunweaver groups. Brandi Streusel, one of the more popular members, noted for her "Brandi's Panties" line of outfits, had been hacked. An amount of Lindens were swiped from her account, a number of items on her were compromised, and the most visible example of what happened, Castle Mousehold was wrecked. The possessed avatar deleted about half the place.

As soon as she realized what was happening, Nydia sounded the alarm in the Sunweaver and Angel groups, in addition to several other groups, urging the account be barred from their places until it was confirmed she was back. And above all, not to click on links she was sending out.

As you all probably know by now, Brandi's account has been hacked, I have banned her where I could, but not before the castle was destroyed, right now...our home is gone. I have asked Rita for a roll back that should fix that, as for when we get Brandi back ….I don't know.

Unfortunately, someone else did click on a link sent by the hacker before word got around, Dusk Griswold. So word went out about the second hacked account, warning that if they clicked on anything sent by them, "you need to change all your passwords NOW, and anything your account is linked to."

If  you are ever sent a website link that tries to be something from Second Life.  Make sure that it is actually from secondlife.com

This   http://markettplacefree.altervista.org/index.html   IS NOT from Second life.  Never click on a link, or log into a page that isn't an Actual Second Life web page.  If you're not sure,, be safe and just don't. 

Eventually, Brandi and Dusk were back. Linden Lab didn't give Brandi the Lindens she lost back, and she had to go through her inventory to examine what might have been compromised. But the sim rollback was carried out and the castle restored. Dusk reported the hackers tried to rob her, but the Lab took care of the details.

Just wanted to let everyone know LL has restored my account after the hacking incident. The person first tried taking all my Lindens, then buying Lindens. They did succeed in making a few small transactions on Paypal, but they have been notified, and I should get credit for those. The Lindens they took from me here have been restored, and all my passwords have been changed.  

And so the hackers were stopped. Thanks to the community spreading the word, no more found themselves locked out of their accounts. But this was a warning to all about "illicit links and the problems they cause."

" …. people will understand the peril they put themselves in if they don't take 5 seconds to simply check links. They can lose everything and not even be here for it, everything including their own financial holdings. A hacker if they can get your account and log in, they can get access to your personal money line account numbers, and that leads to things far far worse than this world. I know... it's happened to me. I fought tooth and nail to get everything back … "

Words of warning to listen to. And of course, a reminder if one suspects anything funny, don't hesitate to change your password.

Press Pass Media also wrote an article recently on the subject of phising scams (click here). 

Bixyl Shuftan