Grey Goo ‘Worm’ attacks Second Life world — Users all a twitter!

Published on November 21st, 2006

BBC NEWS | Technology | ‘Worm’ attacks Second Life world — I still have my opus about this sort of virtual reality waiting in the wings. I am not a fan of these life games. That said I was amused by this worm that went in to eat up the place. This is good stuff!

The self-replicating worm planted spinning gold rings around the virtual world, which is inhabited by more than a million users.

Players treated the attack with a mixture of mirth and anger.

“Can this game get any more unpredictable and exciting?” asked one user, Loretta Lurra on the official Second Life blog.

8 users responded in " Grey Goo ‘Worm’ attacks Second Life world — Users all a twitter! "

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# 1 Peter said, on November 21st, 2006 at 2:40 am

so is this the first virtual worm that made it into reality?
it’s such a boring thing to talk about… a script that creates virtual things in a virtual world, what seems much more interesting is that even rather mainstream media (not that I’d say dvorak.org/blog was mainstream) talk about it. Now, can you try to not think of a spinning golden ring, gleaming in the low virtual sunlight, turning and wobbling slowly, hovering over a stone with the see behind it.. see? The worm has made it into your brain and now there’s this ring and you’ll probably go on and spread it by telling the guy next door… well, next cube.

# 2 jtoso said, on November 21st, 2006 at 7:50 am

Second Life users should get a first life.

# 3 eggfou said, on November 21st, 2006 at 10:48 am

Ok, I play Second Life, and this is not the first “grey goo” attack. Its far from even being the second. I find it odd that this is getting so much news coverage now, since this attack was relatively minor. The problem was solved rather quickly, and the system only went down for maybe 15 minutes on Sunday. In fact, my friends and I were less surprised by the attack, and more surprised by how fix they were able to fix it. This sort of thing is becoming routine, and more of a minor annoyance than real problem.
@ jtso, I also have a real life. I make about $200 a month from Second Life and only put in a couple hours a week. WAY more people are addicted to World of Warcraft than to Second Life.

# 4 FRAGaLOT said, on November 21st, 2006 at 1:06 pm

jtoso, please don’t make stupid comments like this again when you have no clue about this topic. If you have nothing nice to say, STFU.

This isn’t a “game.” People are making a living off of services like this, (there.com, imvu, etc) and earning real money. When something “bad” like this happens it effects real people and their real life. There might be over 1.5 million users on SL, but it’s blown out of proportion. It’s really 1.5 million ACCOUNTS, but most “users” have at least two alternate accounts. I my self own/use about 6 alternate accounts. Besides at any one time I never seen more than 20,000 users on the grid.

Also this Grey Goo thing isn’t new either. These self-replicating object attacks has been going on for a long time. But the reason why they keep doing this to the SL Grid is because it always successful. The Lindens kick everyone offline, take the grid down, and restart it.

This is a classic example of a denial of service attack, and it works every time. However lately it’s taking the lindens less time to recover from these sorts of things.

# 5 jtoso said, on November 21st, 2006 at 1:25 pm

lol

# 6 tallwookie said, on November 21st, 2006 at 1:51 pm

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

#2 – thats a great line

and #4 – lol dude you take that waaaaay too seriously – I’ve been playing mmo’s for over 7 yrs now (uo, asherons call 1 & 2, evercrack, daoc, ddo – and on and on and on) and SL is stooopid (i tried it, its freakin weak, ugly, and bad ui). get over it

# 7 JToso said, on November 21st, 2006 at 2:05 pm

I tried it for an hour once and it was sad.

# 8 OhForTheLoveOf said, on November 21st, 2006 at 3:42 pm

#2 Second Life users should get a first life.

Comment by jtoso — 11/21/2006 @ 7:50 am

To be fair…

People who follow sports…
People who like customizing cars…
Ham radio operators…
LARPers and D&D players…
Jehova’s Witnesses…
Animal activists…
The Montana Freemen…
Anyone who have interests other than mine…

should get a life.

What I mean, obviously (or I hope its obvious) is that virtual community based MMOs are a lot of fun (to certain people) and there isn’t anything wrong with people having different interests.

(Unless you interests are stupid… and I’m talking directly to people who watch Deal or No Deal now)

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