For all of those who were wondering what the "Major Exploit" was.

While putting this on the forums might get some sour views form the Lindens, I believe letting the residents know what exactly was going on would help ease the anger that everyone seems to be having and seeing as the grid is now down for the update, it can’t hurt much eh?

Alrighty, lets get down to business. As most of us know, 99.999% of the bugs / exploits found in Second Life are found by residents. Sometimes they are immediately reported and the problem is fixed silently. Sometimes, like last night for example, word got around fast of this new an tricky little exploit.

How this exploit was found is beyond me as the steps are a bit weird to reproduce but the result is quite amazing.

Let’s say you get two prims. You make one prim blue and one prim red to tell the difference.

**CENSORED**

The game would lock up for a moment then the object that you were sitting on would be in the northern corner of the sim.

It does not take a degree in human nature to figure out that this would be a MAJOR problem if all of our lovely little griefers found out about eh? Linden Lab, seeing this major issue immediately restricted logins to prevent more users from signing on. There was already a buzz around the forums to what this could be so they did not want it to spread to those who were online. Many users were online until they closed the grid officially at exactly 2:40 A.M. PST with the final global announcement saying that the gird will be open in a few hours.

Now I will admit Linden Lab has had some horrible bugs in the past but this one I feel could have gotten out of hand very very fast. Thankfully, it was discovered around midnight PST which would mean most East Coast users would be offline and most in the West. I feel that in this case, Linden Lab responded to the problem very quickly in their effort to contain it. If it was up to me, I would have just shut down the grid the moment the exploit was found BUT I am assuming because the forums is such a great place to start bad threads against Linden Lab, they did not want to cause an ill-tempered resident frenzy.

Now given if this post is deleted it might be for the best as the same exploit could resurface in future updates. But I look to all of these bugs like a normal software engineer would. There are no bugs, just many unknown features. Some are harder to use then others but they are features none the less.

*hops down from the soap box and goes back to "First Life"*


Also on a side note, as long as this exploit was not used for griefing purposes, it was a pretty fun one to play around with. =)


--Sly Axon

and here I was thinking it was Ben Lindens Magical Penis Game was busted.

Oh how we love that penis game.

Sly,

While I do appreciate hearing some detail about the exploit, I do hope you're aware that every single MMOG out there (including SL for the sake of discussion) regards discussing details of an exploit as a major offence and incurs varying severe penalties.

When one needs to discuss the problem of an exploit, it is much advised to leave out as much detail as you can, leaving in only enough to understand the nature of the exploit.

I did that very thing yesterday with regard to a texture theft exploit, left out as much detail as I could while I was trying to reach the Lindens about it.

Pay the lil buggers a thou L in beta to find the best exploits...hehehh

Someone will always find a way...my personal fav and always has been the invisable prim in front of a vendor that takes your money when your trying to buy something, warning to all shop vendors, if you cant put your area on auto return for whatever reason, check several times a day for invisable prims...that is if you can get in, smile

*mumbles something about needing more than 3 or 4 days before patches to test out the new patch*

Surely, nothing nobody's mumbled about before?

*removes tongue from cheek*

That is very true, Aodhan, but the thing is, I KNOW (atleast I hope so) that Linden Lab is fixing said exploit with the patch. The eye-dropper texture nicker is in a different scope as it isnt a high-priority bug. I highly doubt they would have taken the grid down to fix such a problem. Note how I also waited till after they logged everyone out? I know that I am not always careful but I do take steps sometimes.

Also while this was noted, I am looking at this exploit from an intellectual standpoint. I am curious to know how residents find these through such off-the-wall steps. It can't be on accident.

--Sly

Karen Linden's also removed various other posts that contained the information necessary to reproduce the exploit.

However, with the grid locked down I guess it doesnt matter.

Thanks for the heas up. Aye. Since LL took down SL to the public, this should be fairly safe to talk about. Considering what you just mentioned, I'm SURE now it had to be shutdown.

Make me wonder, could this be an old bug that nobody found until now?

I don't think you are going to ease the anger, merely redirect it's angle from being pissed off over poor performance to being pissed off at what is quite clearly an utterly unacceptable situation that should have been checked for in house, and regardless of how wierd it would be to recreate would be very fucking easy! It was probably discovered by sheer chance on a building area where the flat surface is prims on top of the surface, by some random person fiddling around with prims in close situ to each other. If you want to try and deflect anger, it usually is not wise to give us an even better reason to be even more pissed at the Lindens.

I highly doubt it as the steps needed to reproduce the bug are very common in avatar creation so it would have been discovered long ago.

You never know though.

Whats the point in removing the information? Considering it has been public then people will still be able to find it out, the grid is offline right now and it will be fixed when it's back up.

OMFG....

I'm the reason why the patch bug thread was killed and hidden...

I explained this bug step by step and demanded they do a quick fast before half a sim was in the north corner!

Have I just found the backup my post needed?

Well all I was doing was taking the diamond off my hat and resizing it, the tophat looked silly so I hit *self censor* (A key most builders dont know, hence that might be why it wasnt caught) and bam, my posing stand and I were in the sim corner...

Later I was with my mate and um... those special times between lovers at sometimes require adjusting...

(magic key)...

Crap, now we're both in the sim corner... nude... people glaring... yeah >.<;;

So I posted that info and came back to see if any linden had commented, the entire 5 page long thread (I posted on the last page) was gone, presumably hidden or deleted.

Are you f*****g serious ?

From my experience as a past playtester elsewhere: Believe it or not, many of the most disruptive exploits ARE found by accident. They begin when someone slips. Someone later tries to duplicate the feat. Someone later finds how to use that undocumented feat. The exploit is born.

Another way exploits are uncovered is by the "what if" mentality when using game features. This one is more deliberate and it requires logical thought to uncover. The WarpPos script is a good example of this (note though, this is not a disruptive exploit and is regarded as a benign and useful hack).

The exploit you detailed was likely found by accident because it involves something that can occur normally, but this time carried an unexpected result.

And I see that your OP was censored.

Heh, Read his post again. He's not redirecting anger at all... he is simply talking about the situation. I think texture theft and other issues should be addressed immediately regardless and if this wasn't addressed then everone including the Lindens would/should be angry. I dont know why they haven't devised some better cache encrytion yet, but thats another story. Remember, the staff has a QA/Bug testers like any other development team. If the QA doesnt do their job right too many times, well... they find more bug testers or the replace the ones that suck - It's a business! The bug was submitted, they are fixing it, I am bored.

I know what he was doing, but now we know exactly what the problem was it might redirect anger. That exploit was something that somebody quite clearly should have checked for thoroughly before it went in the main grid, if only to check it could not be done due to the wide scale ramifications it could cause.

Oh as to why those posts were removed?

They were made while the grid was still open/ residents were still allowed on. They closed the login process and hoped to let it drain a bit before admin-tossing everyone off.

Now that NO ONE is in game to do it, it is safe to talk about.

so they are not fixing the texture theft exploit???

/139/42/123518/1.html

i couldn't agree more! i mean i very strong belive they should test every last possible combination of key strikes and mouse clicks in every possible mode in game to make sure nothing can happpen!..it couldn't possible be more than ..what...3 or 4 combinations?

Sh*t happens.

Some bugs are never found because the steps that are needed to recreate them are outrageous. The damned thing was available on the preview grid for what, a month or something?

I know sometimes SL affects people in RL (money, friendship....drama..), but after all it is a program. The Second Life staff obviously has alot of talent and it shows. It does suck when something like this happens, but they are fixing it right?

Imagine it as a company.... do you really think its an easy decision to shut down the grid? Once that is decided, do you think it is easy to accomplish that in a couple of seconds?

Everybody ... of course there was a coverup. It is/was an exploit that could/can effect others in game. They will delete posts explaining the exploit. Pretty obvious honestly.

Censorship!