CNet: 'Second Life' turns attacker in to FBI

What Flipper said!


You can do it LL!

Obviously, you don't know much about investment politics, or why things like Sarbanes-Oxley exist.

I was wondering if that was the case. Thanks for clarifying.

lol i have to believe blaze is just playing with ya'll cause he's seemed a little more savvy about silicon valley in the past

so I'm not really writing this to blaze, but to others who aren't as familiar: as long as LL's financials and basic metrics look on the up and up, LL won't have too much trouble raising more money. Benchmark doesn't like just putting 8 mil in a company, they've got too much money sitting around for that. And if they want to hedge, they'll pull in other investors for future rounds. Few VCs are gonna scare away if gurley, kapor and omyidar are nodding their heads going "don't worry about it".

of course, it all depends on LL's financials and growth curve

This is good news indeed. I'm with Flip, though. LL should make this as loud and as public as possible, along official channels, not just through party chit-chat, and 3rd party journals.

And Blaze, for God's sake man, relax! I don't often agree with you, but usually I've been able to see that what I disagree with at least could be sensable from another's point of view. This time, though, you seem to have lost all touch with logic and reason.

First, turning the names of criminals over to the appropriate law enforcement agency (in this case, the FBI) is a matter of civic duty. Real crimes have been committed. In the US it is a felony violation of federal law to willfully crash or otherwise maliciously interfere with the normal operation of a computer network. LL has direct knowledge of the perpetrators of said crimes. It's arguable that were they not to turn over the names they would be complicit. They're just doing the right thing here, Blaze. Give the panic button a rest, will ya?

The FBI is not some sort of evil enemy we should all be afraid of, as you keep implying. Maybe you missed that whole "of the people, by the people, for the people thing," but law enforcement agencies work for us, the people. Their job is to protect us. In order for them to do that, they need to be made aware when any of us have been attacked or threatened. If someone vandalized your house, you'd call the cops, right? If you saw who did it, you'd tell the cops who it was, right? Same thing here. It's nothing scary. Again, it's simply the right and sensible thing to do.

As for the VC question, I doubt it would really make any difference at all, but if it did, it would likely go the way AJ said. If I were an investor, I'd be far more likely to consider my investment "secure" if it went to a company that works with law enforcement to keep bad elements out than I would one that doesn't. Seeing the letters "FBI" certainly wouldn't frighten me away.

Perhaps the most rediculous part of all of this was your inference that the FBI would have any interest in the Linden Dollars. SL is far from the only online world to use an internal monetary system, and it's certainly not the only one in which people pay real money for the privildge of accessing larger amounts of virtual money and other items. There's nothing illegal about it by any stretch of the imagination, so why would the FBI have any cause to care about it? Their job is to catch badguys like the people who crashed the grid, not to stick their noses into legitimate activities for no good reason.

Your paranoia in this matter can only lead to two possible conclusions. Either, you believe normal daily activity in SL is illegal, or else you believe the FBI exists not to enforce the law, but just to make trouble for innocent people. If the former is the case, then the obvious question is why are you here? Do you normally engage in activities you believe are illegal? If it's the latter, then I've met a few survivalists and UFO hunters with whom you'd probably get along famously. Let me know, and I'll introduce you. You can all consipracy-theorize together to your hearts' content.

For what it's worth, you sound a bit like some of my mother's friends and neighbors when she got audited. At the mention of the letters IRS, some of them freaked out, but not Mom. I wasn't there, but as a I heard the story, Mom treated the lady just like any other guest in her home. She said a friendly hello, invited the woman to sit down at the table, and asked what she could get her from the kitchen while they worked. She said something to the effect of "Thanks for coming. I'm glad you guys do this, because I want to make sure I did everything right. You can tell me if anything's incorrect, can't you?"

Mom had at one time had a housekeeper, and it turned out there was in error in how she had reported herself as an employer, and consequently in how she had handled withholding and remitting the housekeeper's taxes. The auditor simply instructed her on how it should have been, and that was it. There were no fines, and Mom didn't even have to pay for the difference of the miscalculations. That was it.

The point is when you embrace law enforcement people and treat them as regular people with jobs to do, they treat you like a person in return. When you treat them as nothing more than a badge or as someone to be afraid of, that's when you look like you've got something to hide, and it doesn't go so well. SL has nothing more to fear from the FBI than my mom did from the IRS.

IF this is escalated to the FBI I would be very suprized. My gut however tells me this is a warning from LL to any would be attackers. I also beleive if it continues they probably will seek these ppl out and give them a good dose of reality. However until LL's bottom line $$$ is affected I do not beleive we will see any actions from LL or the FBI.

Mar

I think any VC firm would be more concerned if SL did not report grid attacks, and did not take these things serioulsy. The integrity of the product depends on happy customers. The only publicity here is "Game Compnay uses all availble methods to protect its player and its infrastructure from hacking."

Anyone who is going to dump VC into an internet compnay knows that hacking can and will happen. What they will look at is how the compnay responds to the threat. The suggestion that VC won't touch LL over is is really just utter crap.

BTW.. if any one cares..

VC is "venture capital"...

and as a person who's run at several VC funded places.. you only get that to start out.

I don't knwo that SL could get VC at nearly 3 years of age. Money.. sure.. investments.. sure.. but dont' call it VC

disagree. you will see many venture capital firms call themselves such at various stages of a companies lifecycle, from seed all the way through mezzanine/bridge funding prior to an IPO.

LL is very much an early stage company right now. You won't be seeing late stage private equity shops putting money in.

THANK You for showing a little bit of Sesne.

LL's gripes are a VERY low priority, and even if they weren't, the Feds attitude toward acking is "as long as it deosn't cause "SIGNIFIGANT ECONOmIC DISTURBANCES", We've got better thigns to do".

Heck one guy I knew in HS TOOK DOWN AOL FOR WEEKS, and all he got was a juvinele offense a coulpe months in Juvie and little probation! It wans't handled y the Feds either,it was andled in State court, and AOL had to PAY THE ENTIRE EXPENSE for the prosecution (that's Part of the DMA). LL doens't have that kind of cash, heck they don't even stoptransfer/give refunds for accidental transactions unless you get the bank to threaten to sue them.

so once again, since Secondlife doens't, in the eyes of those in power, contribute any meaningful economic power to the world it is a GAME that can be taken down at will, and nothign will ever come of it, unless you manage to screw it up SOOOO Bad that it won't recover, and even then, that happens toother tigns on a consistant basis.

And yesIm speakign form expreince as a WEbpovider myself, my site's beena ttacked so many times it isn't funny.......

So "the investment crowd" is going to feel better about pouring money into something that can be brought down at the drop of an ass-hat? (Gah, what Jake said. Just read his post) Somehow I don't think so. I think that investors like to see a company that knows how to protect its assets, and SL's assets are us. And by us, I mean the folks who don't go around trying to halt events, sexually harassing people, crashing sims or taking down the grid.

The Best way SL could stop griefer attacks? Be sure every credit card is run, and ACTUALLY permanently ban attackers.

I'd prefer: 'The sky's not yellow — it's chicken.' —Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues

True to some extent, the FBI has to pick and choose the cases it pursues with available resources, and they frequently use a figure for financial damages as a metric. So in many cracking/worm/DOS cases you'll see discussion of the victims estimating damages in some way as to achieve a six figure or more loss in order to help get the Bureau's attention.

Of course the Bureau also likes to keep its hand in new developments so they'll be familiar with that kind of crime as it becomes more common. Even if they don't take a case formally, they might well have an agent open a file and keep track of whatever LL and other MMORPGs are reporting in order to have background material for future investigations. So in a lot of novel high-tech cases you'll see them pull out information from past complaints when they finally move on someone and can connect them to the past incidents.


Took AOL down for weeks? Don't name names, but give us a timeframe, I'd be curious as to how recently this was still something an individual could pull off. I mean someone makes a claim like that, you would have made sure it was really all of AOL and not just a local POP that was 0wn3d or a kid blowing smoke, right?


Even if the Bureau doesn't bring Federal charges in a case, even if the state or local attorney general doesn't bring charges, the victim can still try to take the hacker to court for damages. In fact, aren't many spam cases being handled this way, where the ISPs and victims are bringing civil complaints themselves? In such a situation an AOL might have to foot the bill initially, but if they win the case their legal fees are usually included in any damages awarded by the judge.

Granted getting the money out of them is a whole other question...

What part of "appropriate law enforcement agencies" is so difficult to understand?
*yawn* Old news.