Worthless, Worthless anti-griefer tools.

6 different accounts have crashed my sim in the past 4 hours using the same 'gun' that spams 'bullets', which are scripted sound-looping cubes.

The problems I have in stopping this:-
1> Obviously payment info. The sims are now Payment Info Restricted. However because SL doesn't require payment info, a large number of people that WOULD have payment info, if SL required it, DON'T. Now I'm the 'bad guy' for locking down the sim.

2> EM tools. I can see the object in front of me. I can see it's got scripts in it. But I can't see them in the EM top scripts tool. Great. I also can't filter properly on the names by typing them, that seems to have been broken.

3> Bans don't take effect fast enough - he managed to crash 2 sims AFTER being estate banned.

4> I can't do a "Return all objects belonging to person X".

5> In the middle of all this, TPs are not working properly again. We seem to be back to the old "TP to the mainland" stupidity.

6> The last several times we've sent in abuse reports we get the usual "thanks, it's been dealt with" with no more info. I've checked the police blotter and have yet to see any action taken. Suspending/deleting an alt account is worthless. I'm the one wasting my time on this stuff, why can't LL tell me "yes, we've locked that person's IP address out from registering more accounts" or something.

7> Group notices to large groups work absolutely intermittantly. I can't communicate the changes out to everyone because our group has 1300 people and everyone knows group notices don't send reliably. I tried and failed.

8> Estate Manager tools need to take priority server time over EVERYTHING. I can't disable physics because the server is too busy to let me use the tools.

I initially thought the open registration was a positive thing that would result in an influx of people to SL. However appropriate tools are still lacking and I'm becoming very, very discouraged. I don't want LL to go back to closed registration. I just need some more effective tools to deal with people who are just trying to ruin SL for everyone else; and LL needs to get it into their heads to HELP those of us "on the side of good" who are trying to provide the type of environment that LL can sell!

Yours in frustration,
Paskis

You should be able to do this: there's an option for it on the Objects tab of About Land, and also on Estate Tools if your sim is a private island.

There are actually no tools that can ever be used to fix the problem. You won't ever be able to ban by IP, only the Lindens can do that, and it is of seriously dubious value anyway.

Welcome to the "new" WWW. It has the same problems as the "old" WWW when it comes to griefers. If someone wants to come ruin your day, they can and will, and the only thing you can do is work your butt off to respond to it reactively.

In the real WWW, the way you get around it is to wall up your enclave and control access to those whom you can get a handle on, and even getting that is hard.

In SL, it is impossible.

I do not know much about "land security" systems but there is no way to make a script to catch the griefer detecting its bullets?
For example, if you put one or more sensors in your land and set them to detect objects and to filter the ones that are moving at certain speed using llDetectedVel then you can use llAddToLandBanList for the owner of that object. Is that a good aproach? Sounds to simple so Im not sure but, I repeat, I have not experience in this field.

Good luck!

Hi and thanks for reading.

-- There's no Estate wide 'return objects' for a particular user. There's a 'return scripted objects' but that seems quite broken at times. Parcels do however have that option but my sims have about 20 parcels, and by the time you've cleaned 2, the sim's crashed if it's a replicator attack.

-- As far as likening SL to the web; the web is based on open standards, and you can choose your clients/servers/protection. SL is entirely proprietory. On the WWW, I could ban your IP, I could ban your subnet, your domain, your ~country~ if I wanted. I could configure incredibly granular control using any combination of methods I wanted, to protect my server if I saw fit. In SL I have mediocre tools. ~that's~ my point. Yes, it's the wild wild west and I don't have a six-shooter.

-- As far as scripted bans/autodetection goes, there's a few options but not many. The bullets don't move, they simply replicate/spam/use scripts to cause physics problems etc. Unfortunately the SL sims are too stupid to cap physics to a reasonable level; how hard could it be to simply tell the server "limit the number of physics objects/amount of time for physics to XYZ" or even "limit the number of physical objects on a sim" or per user.. gosh there are so many ways to do it. I just don't see why sims should blindly allow people to put them into a position where there is nothing the sim can do other than fall on its arse.

Cheers

I thought this would be a nice idea too, so I tried to write a HUD that would detect bullets that were flying near me. Would you believe that it's not actually possible to do a llSensor() that detects ONLY physical objects, and not nonphysical scripted objects as well? The plethora of the latter wastes spaces in the 16 sensor slots, ruining the effectiveness of the detection.

We've learnt a few things in the past 24 hours.

1> Who these guys are. Basically rejects from other griefy-groups who actually have some standards or a purpose other than just using the same weapons created by others to crash things and go "whee look what I did".

2> That 'permanent' bans aren't really effective and can be circumnagivated, something that I guess could become easier with the open source client providing the capability for the client to misrepresent HDD serial numbers etc.

3> That additional EM tools, though helpful, wouldn't solve the problem because you can't stop someone with a brand new account if they can appear on your sim and crash it moments later.

4> That the fundamental problem is that the server ~allows~ itself to be crashed. Or, probably more accurately, it detects the ultra-high physics load and performs a restart and slight rollback (which is actually a very nice feature and beats having to do it manually.)

Why should anyone be capable of generating enough physical objects ~ever~ to crash a sim? WHY can the sim not simply clamp physics at a level say - twice the safe normal load - and simply prevent any further objects being created?

I'm assuming there's some internal architectural problem with doing that. Great, programmers love problems. I reckon if you solve that - prevent people from taking actions that actually cause such damage - then it'll no longer matter what tools we have, or whether people can openly register.

They don't need the open source client to circumvent the restrictions. It's long been known that a proxy can scramble your mac and id0 fields and even route through Tor to appear as someone else, and PHP scripts and client programs to do this have been circling around places like 7chan and the like. But you're right, with the open source viewer we all know that the hardware hash is based on the C:\ serial number in Windows and the hardware serial number in OSX (and not set in Linux!).

Which is why 9 out of 10 hackers choose Linux.
(The last one uses Windows XP because he can just change it with a click and isn't worries about system stability).

Perhaps we need an estate owners group similar to the early warning systems that some shopkeepers use in the UK.

When a sim is attacked the owner/estate manager immediately hits the group im with the name/s of the griefer/s and we all ban them from our sims by name.

It may be that when they find they cannot get around the private sims they will go and cry to Mummy and Daddy and perhaps go back to spraying graffiti in RL.

I also find that if my residents are faced with them, using their own type of weapons, although not within the TOS, against them. like orbiting them, to gain time for the bans to work, is quite effective.

Also on our latest island sim we have built into the covenant no payment infos will not be allowed on sim.

Femina Matahari

I am curious, you could have simply turned off Create Objects for anything except Group.

....Perhaps we need an estate owners group similar to the early warning systems that some shopkeepers use in the UK.

check out http://www.slbanlink.com/ - that's helped a whole lot!

...I am curious, you could have simply turned off Create Objects for anything except Group.

Sounds like a mainlander's comment (No offense) -- I'm worried about people who crash sims, which may have many parcels.

And if you are computer litterate enough to install & get linux to work with programs then you are halfway skilled enough to become a computer hacker
Faster & more secure is great when you can't get compatible software to run
Linux needs a lot of work still to unsurp windows

Aint that the truth. My desktop refuses to run Linux of any flavor. Currently it has Ubuntu installed and it freezes apparently as the result of using the mouse. I'm not the only one with this issue, but there are no helpful replies on the Ubuntu forums (the entire thread is "me too".