Some more anti-grid attack thoughts.

These are some ideas on how to make the mainland more resilient to grid bombs that don't rely on the idea of some kind of "universial script checker" or such.

1) Firebreaks. the void sims could be made into no build, no script, possibly even no-physics areas... or simply dispense with the idea of a contiguious maingrid entirely. Here, I'm NOT talking about the big interior lakes people use to boat, but the north/south continent connector, or the sims linking to the bulk-sale areas. It has some downsides, but it would help slow things down, I'd think.

2) A big red "NO SIM CROSSINGS" switch. Metaphorically speaking. Some manner of halting all sim crossings of any sort on the "Linden estate". While such a thing may exist, and it would certainly be a hassle, having a Linden turn it on, clean up a griefbomb attack, and then set things back to normal is better than having the grid crash again!

Maybe if just some "smaller" spaces between portions of each 'continent' that are no build-no script and large enough that objects can't be Pushed (?) or llPositioned across, yet would allow avatars to move freely.

Any firebreak that was going to stop malicious scripts from getting across them on physics would have to be multiple sims wide.

Disable logins. 100% effective.

Ooh, I just had an idea. Let's combine both of those ideas. Whenever a grid attack looks like it's getting going, hit the big "FIREWALL" switch, which disables sim-crossings selectively to split the mainland into a bunch of small clumps of sims. Figure out which ones are infected, take them down, clean them up, etc. The rest of the grid is mostly unhampered, aside from a few border crossings. I'm pretty sure that most people would gladly accept not being able to cross borders in exchnage for being able to stay on the grid while it's being cleaned up. People can always just teleport past a border... and objects can't.

Yet one more step: turn off object border-crossings during an attack. Avs can still move across boundaries (because, despite prim-babies, we still haven't figured out how to replicate avs ) but any object can't, which would pen in grey goo. Vehicles would be hampered, of course, but come on... who's going to complain that they can't drive down linden highways during a grid attack?

I guess the point here is to limit the spread of grid attacks when they do start, rather than trying to enforce some kind of draconian restriction to prevent them completely. Seems like a much better way of handling the situation to me.

The firewall idea could actually help, though it won't stop a prepared attack that plants the malevolent objects ahead of time.

As an extra bonus they could change the cloud particles to a flame animation while the firewall's up.

That was the idea, encase ever 9 or 16 sims in a 10m wide no-script zone. Highways and open water areas would have to be considered differently.

Or somethng like this, looks like it might work:



This second half is kinda what I was thinking--if it can be done. The 10m zone was if you can't make a physical/no-script/etc.-for-objects "wall."

If people can teleport across the firewall borders, then so can whoever is planting the malicious scripted objects.

Certainly so. But it would slow them down - for the same reason private islands have mostly been unscathed during these attacks. Make it too time-consuming, they can't bring down the grid.

No, I mean the firebreak would have to be 9 or 16 sims of "no script" wide. It's trivial to get an object across a couple of sims without it having to run scripts while it's doing it, and it's not that hard to get it across 10 sims.

I have an even better idea.

Disassemble the Linden Estate. Islands don't HAVE these problems.

There's lots of other reasons why the whole "contiguous world" concept has been a less than successful experiment. Just break the continents up into islands, none more than 20-30 sims each. Use llTeleportAgent to create an illusion of continuity.

With the amount of teleporting going on, the whole concept of a global continent vis pretty meaningless anyway. I don't know anyone who routinely travels across more than 2 sims in succession without teleporting.

Well you don't know me. But I routinely roam sims by vehicle. I like vehicles and I ride them a lot. At the speeds I go crossing 2 sims is nothing.

If not on vehicle I fly. It's a really great view traveling from sim to sim. Teleports take out all the fun and I use them only if I'm in a hurry or there's some emergency.

I do. I've flown from Ahern to Calbeck and back, and fly around the Atoll continent (that mountain range is gorgeous on a flying wing like the Mehve) or from Lusk to Abbotts and back regularly. Which is why I would like to have the option of at least retaining the illusion of a contiguous world with llTeleportArgent().

I've flown as much as 8km before just to get somewhere for the hell of it because I didn't want to TP, and despite my often limited range of places I go to, I do enjoy exploring and seeing cool things (I'd never seen the awesome railway systems people have made until I did this!).

One question though, what (if any) are the legitimate uses of:
a) rezzing an object over a sim-border
b) moving an object over a sim-border via script?

The only things I'm thinking of are vehicles being propelled over sim-borders, but in this case there will be someone sitting on it.

Perhaps more importantly, what (if any) are the legitimate uses of combining both events? I'm thinking none here, as for the above I can think of large vehicles (e.g space cruisers) that require a 'seated' part followed by other parts with no-one sitting on them.
However, these don't move into a sim and then attempt to rez objects.

So what if a huge delay were put on llRezObject() and llRezAtRoot() after an item moves into a sim? ie, Object A has just cross from Sim B, to Sim C, Sim C places a 24 hour delay on Object A's ability to rez other objects. This would only occur if the object was moved by script or as the result of a physical action.
Additionally, objects which are rezzed across a sim border would be similarly delayed.
For scripted games (such as Tringo) this shouldn't be a problem, as they rez objects which are then moved into position and do not rez objects of their own, so this would be fine.

While I know some people hate dialogues, if an object recently arrived in a sim without someone on it, attached to it or manually moving it, and it attempts to perform a push ON someone, it should ask their permission first or otherwise silently fail, it would ask only once and respect this user's answer. If multiple users are asked, and all say no, then the script is disabled. Similarly if multiple scripts of the same owner ask the same user who says no to all then that owner stops being able to ask for permission to push that user.

The worst that can happen this way, is that a parent object can send out lots of child objects in every direction, however, they won't then be able to do much due to the restrictions, the hope being that within 24 hours a Linden can be informed of the attempted attack and remove all of the objects, perhaps using a "Remove and ban" option which would remove all objects by a given owner and kick their ass off of SL.

Other ideas include having simulators track the number of rezzes that an object owner has made recently. ie for each object rezzed a counter goes up by one and incurs an increasing delay on future object creations. The counter would go down every time an item is removed/de-rezzed whatever. So if an object is creating things like crazy and none of them are being deleted, it will lose the ability to create anything. The counter would also go down after a while (say an hour), to allow people who are just building innoccently to not suffer because they have a ton of objects added to a sim.
Objects that are created and move out of the simulator would remain in the counter as the sim doesn't know if they were deleted or not.
This one would only help against objects that just spam by rezzing everywhere, it wouldn't stop orbitting attacks that are done with some degree of care.

so basically most of these solutions would prevent me to write this script tharecord stats from sim to sim by roaming the grid right?

All these suggestions are as usually formulated by peoples that have no clue -_-

Not by my idea, unless you're rezzing a ton of objects that replicate in order to travel the sims, the should really just move in order to do this in some sensible pattern.

Any object that follows an avatar has to do (b). Many followers rez objects.

Making small "Firebreaks" is a quick short term solution since land owners can do it, however if you look at how some of the atacks are done and the resources the atackers have you will see that anything that any atempt to stop them will also prevent normal activities.

1. People have screen readers and programs that can control SL. This means that
they can program there avitar to teleport from sim to sim and drop objects automaticly.

2. Some atacks drop non physical objects that then rez other things like that "ultra-lag"

3. People want there pet's to follow them and they want to be free to build stuff.

It's like trying to prevent theves from using "social engenering" to steal things by blocking all Emails.

what we need is for LL to make the system more resiliant to atacks so that they don't have any affect.

For example: I'd like a setting that let's me limit the number of "temp-on-rez" prims.

From a nearby post: /108/19/103390/5.html#post1020392


Why not give scripts the ability to toggle no-build and no-outside scripts on land? Then people could make a detector that, if it saw enough physical objects in range, would literally just shut them off.. hell could even make it a new toggle for sim owners so that no in-game scripting was needed.





This is also an issue, if there were a way to check primcounts and owners on a parcel/sim*, it would be very useful. I could see a script that did a check ever 5-10seconds and compared growth of primcount, where say a single sharp rise wouldn't trigger it.. say if someone rezzed a whole house, but a steady increase would set it off?

Also the lindens could quietly place a single prim sim controller into every sim in SL, and in case of grid attack they could all be instant messaged and activated, halting all object and script production in the grid?.. maybe a little much, and maybe people could opt out of the system, but I think having to retoggle some flags on your land(after having it locked for maybe a half hour to clean up the mess) would be better then losing six hours to a grid crash.

*I am really for this idea now, since I think it's more useful than a sensor even if specific info would need to be weeded out. I am envisioning it as something like:




and perhaps to suppliment that:




Long post, probably confusing to alot of you, and I bet a little messy since I am hoping to get a nap soon..

Comments appreciated though, and if the idea needs to be shot down, just say so.

**Sorry if it's confusing, kinda all over the place at the moment, but I will gladly clarify..

I'd like to do

if ( llGetLandPrimCount() > x )
{
//Set "No build" and "No outside scripts"
// IM land owner
}

Or SL could set "no build" automaticly when a piece of land hits the prim limit.

Intrestingy LL has the ability to set "No stripts at all" on a sim. I've seen them do it.

Kelly Linden indicated to me that they're considering a call to allow you to enumerate all the objects on a parcel.

<3