Exploit or just a bizarre SL bug/coincidence?

I'm minding my own business in Sandbox Gorgeun when suddenly someone cage-balls and orbits me. I quick grab the cageball in edit mode, screenshot it and report the abuse.

Then I float back down to ground level near the assaulter and say in open chat that I have reported their cage ball usage. I then fly away from them to go do something else.


Within ten seconds of saying that, suddenly my SL client (most recent version) suddenly crashes to the desktop in a manner that I have absolutely never seen before. It is gone, no warning at all, no taskbar app name, nothing, and I am staring at the desktop.

I log back in and do the crash reporting, and send off another abuse report to LL, just in case someone can actually remotely exploit-crash to someone else's client..

Back in Sandbox Gorgeun. I now start moving forward and up to fly over the landscape, except now it seems I'm stuck in fly-forward-up mode. The sim is lagging somewhat but I fly completely up into the air and off the grid to some -200. 300, 1000.

This next bit gets a little odd, but suddenly I find myself back on the ground again, but my avatar has suddenly switched all by itself from a man's shape to a big-breasted woman's shape, and for some reason it seems I've appeared within about 10 meters of my original assaulter who casually says in chat "the server's stopped lagging finally".

And then the SL client crashes again.


At this point I'm sufficiently suspicious to wonder if it's possible for someone to manipulate someone else's datastream through some sort of exploit. In all the time I've been on SL, I've never seen anything like this happen before, and the coincidence of it all occurring so close to having informed an abuser that I've reported their abuse in a no-weapons sandbox is very hard to ignore..

Could the griefer have deliberately caused those *specific* effects? No way. COULD you have been griefed this way? I believe so. Did this happen to you? I cannot say.

Most of what happened to you sounds to me like genuine server-lag and packet-loss-lag issues.

That said, it is certainly POSSIBLE for a griefer to deliberately generate server-lag and to do things that promote packet-loss-lag. Oh, and it is also possible that the griefer crashed the sim. Sim crashes often have bizarre effects.