Should LL leagally punish grid attacks

I think we should punish these attacks ILLEGALLY! *cracks knuckles*

Turn 'em over to the FBI for criminal charges. Disrupting interstate and international commerice is a federal offense, and probably falls under some of the USA's new anti-terrorisim laws, as well. Attacks that force LL to shut down to clean up the mess have a very real financial impact on the company.

Prosecute them the same as any hacker who breaks into a corporate computer net and breaks it. If these same idiots had shut down the computer network at Nike, or at Wal-Mart, you can bet there would be legal action, hot and heavy.

Come on, folks. It's painfully easy to tell who launches these attacks. It's not like they were hacking the back end and coming in stealthily. These idiots are signing up for accounts with easily traced personal information. Make them face criminal charges for their actions.

Lisa,

First, they are pursuing CRIMINAL prosecution by law enforcement...NOT civil law suits. So the first reason kind of goes away.

Second, IF this was a technical issue then a technical solution might be in order. But it is NOT a technical issue. Things like last night and the pre-1.7 attack do NOT happen because of a technical problem. In other words the cause and effect relationship is NOT: technical problem is the cause of grid attack.

These are caused by nothing else but criminal actions of people. The cause and effect relationship IS: criminals are the cause of grid attack.

While you might get rid of this one kind of criminal action by removing functionality from the world it does not stop criminals from being criminals...it ONLY removes one of a myriad of avenues they have to screw up other peoples lives.

If arsons took to burning down shopping malls would you make fire illegal for everyone?

To me this is the kind of innane overreaction that occured with taking certain objects on airlines. I mean freaking FINGERNAIL clippers? How many of you would be seriously worried about someone jumping up in the aisle and brandishing his fingernail clippers meanacingly?

What you SHOULD do is let sane, reasonable people continue with their sane, reasonable lives enjoying ALL the freedoms the possibly can. The criminals that want to mess with us should be hunted down and tossed in a nice dark cell where they can wile away their pathetic lives with their new bf.

Thats a great Idea. Throw them in a cell so the Prisons and Jails in the country of America can be clogged up more so the people who commit things like child pornography and Murder get a better chance at getting out because of lack of room. There is a way around this. I can think of alot of ONline games that have never had a terrorist attack on them. Maybe they should just prevent it from happening altogether by taking out scripting from SL all together and creating the scripts needed for the game to run smothley. Like for instance Counter Strike... Not sure there has ever even been a terrorist act of violence in there. Besides maybe blowing people apart which is the point of the game. I'm sure that anything is possible.

Because, in case you haven't actually READ anything written by LL executives, SL is intended to be an on-line world where people can conduct business AND entertain themselves.

You're still stuck in this fantasy that SL is NOTHING but a game. That is simply not LLs intentions...sorry.

Taking out scripting would effectively kill their own vision for this virtual world.

So should we apply the same logic to RL? We can get rid of airline hijakings by simply removing the airline industry. If no one flies on airlines the terrorists won't have anything to hijack. Brilliant!

I find your victim mentality of "don't do anything interesting enough to attract the terrorists" kind of pathetic actually. I sure don't want to live my life like that.

As to the clogging of jails I think you can relate that directly to prosecution of victimless crimes such as prostitution and drug use. This, however, is NOT a victimless crime. It is NO different than breaking windows in a shopping mall or burning down someones store.

Whats going on! I was on earlier today and they said that SL was going dow for an update and tis still down... whens it going back up? I have a business to open and other stuff to do.... *contunues whining even though noone really cares.*

I guess it's a good thing I didn't ask for your opinion. Or I may find that offensive.

In ANY secure system that attracts attention, it can and will be attacked, plain and simple.
Welcome to the world of programming; you constantly need to evolve and fix problems. Does microsoft go out and sue everyone that finds a malicious exploit in any of their software? nope. Why? because there's always some script kiddie who is going to say "w00t, i'm so r0x0rz 1337, i'm gonna h4x0r these n00bz" regardless of the legal reprecussions. AND, This issue is so simple to fix it's near frightening why LL hasnt patched it yet.



Once again, any network that attracts people WILL be attacked. "Let's sue joe shmoe because he released some replicating balls we couldnt take a day to fix!" 6 months go by, and in that timeframe where LL's legal team has been going at it with 3 or so "hackers," jane doe comes and ****************************************. (Removed, not going to spread more weaknesses of the SL infrastructure). If there's guys out there that aren't scared to hack microsoft's corporate page, or any other number of high profile servers, do you think the same guys will even blink at attacking SL?

Instead of wasting time, energy, and resources in court, why not use that time debugging?

Find a hole, fix a hole, is that such an unreasonable request? Oh of course not, we needed refracting water. That's far more important than fixing this incredibly easy self replicating prim problem.

Your logic doesn't seem to work. XP has an exploitable line of code! OMG! lets scrap it!.....no wait let's just admnister a bugfix, and move on.



True, you CANNOT blame the quality of the lock vs calling the police, but you make yourself a thousand times more likely to be robbed if you leave all your doors wide open, all your valuables in the doorway, and a huge sign that says "on vacation until next month!" It's still against the law on the thief's part, but if he wouldn't have, there's a million others who know burglary is illegal, but will hit your wide open house anyway because you couldn't have made it easier for them and they think they'll get away with it.

Since no one has gotten it yet, I'll do it... Vir from Babylon 5 is one of my favorite character's ever, especially since Stephen Furst was Flounder from Animal House.

Bab-5 quotes are popping up a lot lately - here here!

-Flip

Lisa I don't think I could have said that better myself. Well said doll

That absolutely DOES change my view on things, then. I was always under the impression that they were pursuing civil lawsuits to recoup their losses. My mistake for the misunderstanding, I do belive authorites should be notified, but DONT believe this should be a priority for LL. Before legally punishing grid attacks, they should begin with punishing them in world. It's notoriously easy to get passed LL's so called bans, change your MAC and bounce off of a proxy and you're back in. Things would be more efficient if they would implement hardware bans, not overly hard to do either.

Have you ever considered how many businesses and thousands, if not millions of dollars, you would be costing you fellow SL citizens by removing scripting? Obviously not. You'd cost me several thousand right off the bat.

These kiddies should be prosecuted. There's not such thing as a 100% secure system. Its always an ongoing battle. Just look at history.

If eBay and Yahoo! can be hacked (and have been several times in the past), how do you expect a company LL's size to make a 100% secure system? No one has EVER written a 100% secure system.

Regards,

-Flip

this is exactly the point i'm trying to stress. It's always an ongoing battle; now when is LL going to start fortifing it's defenses? There is no 100% secure system, just like there's no 100% secure car; but does that mean you're going to say "it's impossible to make it 100% secure anyway, let's not fix the broken window, or the broken passenger door lock"?

The problem with pursuing legal means is that often the culprit is in a country that does not have diplomatic ties with the United States, and these people often use stolen credit card numbers and addresses.

So the police knock down the door of the "suspect", only to find an 87 year old man and his wife who don't even own a computer.

I remember a .vbs based virus that hit a company I worked at. I took the script apart and found some comments that were written by someone with an obviously poor grasp of English. Later, I found out that the script originated in China.

We can't arrest someone in China.

LL does need to close the holes that allow this to happen. My question to LindenLab is, "Why didn't you fix the self-replicationg exploit when the FIRST recent grid attack took place? Why didn't you fix it in 2004 when I was here and locked out due to a similar exploit? Why wasn't this fixed the first time someone accidentally took the grid down with a self-replicating object?

This is not a new problem. Not fixing a known vulnerability in your software is a bit like opening the garage door before you go to work and wondering why your classic Corvette is gone when you come home that night.

Exactly the point, cna't arrrest sone onein China, Cna't even nessarily arrest someon inht US if the arne't in Cali.

ALso people, remember LOSS OF PROFITS doens't count towad the $5000 Minimum to amke the feds even notice, it has to be PAYOUTS.

The only entity in this situtation that even stands a chance of showing substainsial loss, is Linden labs, and frnakly, I doubt Even LL can get the person charged, much less convicted.

Remember this will go to jury, and as I said before,A lot of people see hacking a game as hacking a game. Heck my parent's would luagh thier butts off and return a not guilty or a I'm not even voting on this so fast your head would spin...........

you betcha! I'll sign up for a class action also.. its not a greedy money "GIMME SOMEONE TO SUE" thing, it's a PRINCIPLE thing.. and indeed the apropriate response to a multi player attack. To every injury there must be a remedy. If nothing else, to impede FUTURE wanna-be attackers.
*tosses 2 cents on the table and walks off*

I didn't say that. I'm just saying not to remove the engine. I'm just saying not to close the bank because occasionally they get robbed.

I *am* saying prosecute, because that sends a message that if you rob the bank, and you get caught, you're going to be prosecuted. Its a simple analogy, but an elegant one. In the past, the kiddies have been caught, and there hasn't been any reports to the FBI (that we know of) or any legal action. We're hoping that will change.

Security in SL *has* been addressed, and is constantly, much like any software app. What do you think a lot of these updates we go through are for? Do you remember when the exploit allow LSL source to be stolen was found, and how quickly they patched that?

Also, Plastic Duck, the idiot 16-year old Harry Potter wannabe kid who used that exploit to release some of SL's best known scripters source code was in Canada. The FBI could have easily gone after him.

Regards,

-Flip

which is exactly why I say, its not apriority for the feds, and they dont' realy care..........

Life ain't fiar, get over it. If it was the perosn that keeps taking down MY site would be in jail.....

Good news for 92% of us..



Thanks for the news Kritter!