Security hole?

The other day, friends of mine became victims to a form of griefing that I would not have thought technically possible. The griefers somehow seized access to their land rights, returned all their stuff and terraformed their land.

My friend actually witnessed them doing it and talked to them. He says: "they laughed at us and said that thier was nothing we could do to stop them nor could linden labs stop them as they spoof thier IP's and it wouldn't matter anyway because they have multiple IP's and multiple alts..."

Now if something like this can happen, there must be some security hole somewhere as big as a barn door.

Two obvious questions: How was this done? What is to be done about it?

Um...having a hard time believing that this actually happened as your 'friend' says it did. I'd like to see what anyone else has to say....but I'm not inclined to believe it's possible.

/me agrees but notes that this isn't the first time we heard of this lately. There was a similar thread a week or 3 ago.

There was another emergency server deploy that was scheduled to be completed this morning. That may have something to do with it............so I won't say it's impossible or even unlikely. But, it does seem a little far fetched.......especially the part about LL not being able to do anything about it. Hardware hash bans are a little more difficult to get around than IP bans.........even a cheap off the shelf computer with capabilities to run SL would be a little expensive for someone to have in reserve just to play stupid games like returning someones objects and terraforming their land.

I have heard that megaprims can be rez'ed on the next plot and pushed into the plot next to it. The neighbor would have object entry turned on. As long as the centre of the megaprim is on the plot that allow build, it stays there. Now I am no builder but if they had these prims transparent and kept rez'in them fast...? I am sure someone with better knowledge can say if it's possible.

For terraforming, well, no idea. They haven't left on rights for all to terraform?

it could have been a misconfigured group or a inside job by an officer giving the griefers the rights to do this kind of thing

Remember anything that might help find that thread? Perhaps the exact url of the thread or some other other clue?

Actually any prim can be pushed onto another parcel mega prim or not, object entry on or not. Currently, as long as the center point of the prim remains on the neighboring lot, it will move onto the other parcel. This has been an issue for a long time, as griefing is often not the case, but rather someone who wasn't paying attention simply overlapping onto a neighboring parcel. Most of the time a simple, nicely worded request to move the prim fixes the situation, however, often times people are mean, or impossible to get a hold of, and it's difficult to get something like that removed. There are changes in the works though that will stop a prim from overlapping onto another parcel by not allowing any entry onto a parcel by using the bounding box instead of the prim center as the cut off point. As far as land being stolen, it's just not possible. Even if it is, a simple ticket to LL will get the situation fixed. LL has logs of all land transactions, and if something fishy has gone on, they will fix it. Most likely what happened was that the person was selling the land to themselves or a friend, and set it for sale to anyone for $1L and a bot beat them to the lot. People make this stupid mistake again and again despite numerous warnings when land is being set for sale.

Thank you Johan. Suzanne, here's what I read about such griefing:

Does not mention terraforming. Only prims used to push off and return stuff.

I like building in the Hanja welcome area once in a while. Drives people nutzo. (^_^)y

To the OP: Does your friend still own the land?

It's a bit unclear, but I didn't read it as if the land was stolen. Just the stuff returned and the land terraformed.

For those for which urls enclosed in img tags just vanish, the link was:
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/36826-how-possible-land-issue-any.html

Slight derail: Found out interesting info; Was interesting to me anyway, you all probably all know it already. One of my residents was inworld, but not on her land. She IM'd me to ask if I was doing something with the land, because she was getting messages that her items were going offworld. I wasn't doing anything. I went over to her parcel and found her land had gone nuts, huge spikes of it going all the way up to heaven, all inside of her build on her land, is what was sending things 'offworld'. She came right home and realized what had happened; she'd been doing something with a land flattener in her skybox. Using a land flattener in a skybox raises the land below. I still can't figure out why, but I guess the land flattener has a really far reach.

Back to your regularly scheduled conversation....

It can happen a little when neighbor land has open terraform. Prims on the ground go off world if the land goes too tall.

that could have easily been what happened to the OP's friend..lifting the land over the object i believe puts them off world..

Right...in which case, not allowing anyone to 'edit terrain' is the answer in a case like that. The OP said objects were returned, which could be the same thing as going 'offworld', as they do get returned...

The question was raised whether my friends still own the land... yes, they do. As for the other questions, how the land and group rights were set etc. I'll try to find out more. Really curious about this thing.

I'm one of the owners of the island , these people turned up on our land , managed to come right up to the house although the orbs should have booted them , they taunted us in voice telling us that there was nothing we or LL could do and started terrraforming , our objects got returned including parts of the cabin and the security orbs

Ejecting Freezing and banning didnt work

They weren't in the group or on the allowed residents list

only Dakx and I had land permissions

So you did NOT have 'Edit Terrain' enabled......and plus you had an orb. Wow. Back to square one. I still think the objects were returned due to the terraforming, I just don't get how they managed to remain on your land, and how they managed to terraform. Did they say, in your ummm discussion if you were just random or were you singled out for some reason? And of course, you AR'd like crazy while this was going on, right, and no help from LL?

comming up to the house could simple be an offset animation or radar avoiding verhicle, in both cases the look like they are on the land but inrealety they are on other peoples land, in that case freezing and banning would not work because they are not on the land in the first place.
When you say island, do you mean sim or a parcel of land serounded by water? it makes a huge difference in what you can do to stop attacks like this in the future

I've had off-world objects returned in the past - normally vehicles.
Te notification mentions the reason for the return.



I just did a test on my land.
I terraformed a pit, rezzed a cube at the bottom, and terraformed to cover it.
5 minutes have passed and the sim hasn't sicked it back at me. It's still under there.

If I Edit and try to move it, it rises up to just below the terrain level.
I find that I can also use edit to move a prim under ground, but only slightly under.
If I use edit to move it about under uneven ground, it automatically 'hovers' just under the lowest level of the ground.

If I make it physical, it is ejected and lands on the ground.



Sooooo.

Deffo not a terraforming attack.

OK, here's what happened and the settings at the time.
Security system at the time was, Triple Labs Pro version. The orb at the tp point was set to record only, the orb at the house was set to eject all ppl except for Kit and I.
The doors to the house were set to lock/unlock for kit and I only.
Terraforming was unchecked, I assumed that only Kit and I could terraform as we have estate rights, I didn't know that anyone could terraform. Now I do.
They flew up to the house, they were on voice, I told Kit not to worry as the orb would eject them, he laughed, he said that there was nothing that would eject them, nothing that Linden Labs could do, they could spoof thier IP's and had multiple alts and multiple IP's and could do whatever they wanted. The began to return our items en-mass, that includes perm and non-perm itmes, they are now in my inventory as multiple objects.
They began to terraform and bury our sim, not all items that were buried got return, alot of them remained under the sim. Not all items that got returned were buried, they were just returned. We yelled for help to RGF, the Estate holders, no help help there. We were finally able to cut and paste each of their names and add them to the ban list, but that didn't work either. They left on their own, but one returned to retrieve a 20 prim object at about 800 meters above the sim. Kit looked for the object but she didn't think about looking up in the air. We have since turned off public access and added all of their names to the ban list, the 4 ppl said that it wouldn't matter because thay had multiple alts and could return at will.
Kit and I hardly ever leave the sim, we don't have any enemies that we know of, our sim has been open to the public to enjoy with a notecard given that says the entire island is open except for the use of the house. The house/corner of the sim was what was attacked.
It's my belief that explains why we were attacked, we had the radio set for only Kitand I to chage stations as we had discovered that the station had been changed in the past, that was deleted, all security orbs were returned, had no effect anyway.
Ideas anyone? We have reported it to the Lindens but Linden doesn't tell you what actions are taken.

This all sounds very odd. I would have assumed a terraforming attack as well, since many people check the public terraforming box to allow their friends to make changes, not knowing that deeding the land and controlling terraforming through group roles is really the way to go. However the posters here say public landshaping was disabled.

Anyway, if you haven't already, do the following:
- Report all avatars with Help > Abuse Report.
- Lock down your island for a while (estate-level access list or parcel access list) and see if anyone else is able to infiltrate. A stand-alone island with an access list should not be accessible to anyone who isn't an estate manager or island group member.
- Request that the actual island owner requests an island roll-back. The sooner you make the request the better. You also need to report the time and day when the attack occurred so LL knows which back-up copy to restore. They only keep a few days' worth of roll-backs.

I've heard that terraforming will make objects go off world and be returned and I have heard it from multiple sources. It doesn't seem to happen in all cases but I am convinced it happens in some cases. How much did you make the land rise above the object?

Did the security orb log their names?

It sounds as if they had found some way to get Linden god powers for the land.

When Lindens are in that mode, normal scanning does not detect them.
I once had 3 lindens on my land and they were invisible to my visitor scanner.