Grid Attacks and Approaches to Cope

Yesterday (September 18, 2006) the SL grid was attacked three different times by self-replicating objects.

A self-replicating object is a prim (or a linked group of prims) that contain scripts that are designed to make copies of the object. Often, these objects move around the grid by themselves (using physical movement to avoid being disabled when crossing no-script areas) and replicate at a certain interval to aviod detection for as long as possible.

This type of attack strains the SL systems since it results in a large number of objects throughout the grid, each running their own scripts and moving throughout (if they are using physical movement). I saw about 160 of these objects on one of my plots of land -- many others were reporting many more.

LL has coped with this problem in the past by disabling new logins and then attempting to remove the offending objects. At times, they have had to take down SL for hours while they work to clean up the mess.

Recently LL has been handling grid-wide attacks by disabling all scripts in SL -- this is a great idea.

Although vendors, teleporters, games, camping chairs, doors, and a range of other things stop working you can at least build, socialize, terraform your land or just get organized.

Sure it's a headache, but it beats being logged out and unable to login for a long time.