Griefer, estate banning people inc estate managers from a sim ?

[Keyeung Attis]

 

This has been going on for some time, and the matter has been referred to LL, periodically we are finding all of the estate managers are being placed upon the land ban list by person / persons unknown. This seems to happen around once every week or so and the sim owner has to be contacted to remove people from the estate / land ban list. I am wondering how this is even possible for some one not who is not an estate manager to bann on mass people from a sim. And more importantly what we can do about it.


From my findings to date this is likely to be some one using a disposable account who is coming onto the sim and I guess using a 'griefing' tool to achieve this as everyone on the estate manages list has been individually interviewed and are trusted members or the team.

 

 

 

[Thinkerer Melville]

What you describe should not be possible. The owner should file a ticket and should talk to the concierge.  If this is happening as you describe, it represents a serious flaw in the system and LL needs to investigate it.    LL will probably suspect (as I do) that one of the estate managers is doing it and suggest the owner replace some or all of the estate managers as a test.  

TKR

[Malanya]

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Keyeung Attis wrote:

 

This has been going on for some time, and the matter has been referred to LL, periodically we are finding all of the estate managers are being placed upon the land ban list by person / persons unknown. This seems to happen around once every week or so and the sim owner has to be contacted to remove people from the estate / land ban list. I am wondering how this is even possible for some one not who is not an estate manager to bann on mass people from a sim. And more importantly what we can do about it.

 

 

From my findings to date this is likely to be some one using a disposable account who is coming onto the sim and I guess using a 'griefing' tool to achieve this as everyone on the estate manages list has been individually interviewed and are trusted members or the team.

 

 

 

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Yes, this is very possible with a TPV that code has been altered. The sim owner should be able to have a Linden come and check the security of the sim.

[Keyeung Attis]

 

I tend to agree that what I am describing should not be possible, none the less to date this has happen five times, usually with a week or a little longer between episodes, this all started a few months ago with a griefer rezzing security orbs on the sim, these initially ejected people from the sim by way of returing them home. Again this was using disposable accounts, we locked the sim down by restricting who could rez objects and the attacks stoped for a while.

The owner has been in contact with LL and were running a performance and security evaluation on the sim, they thought that this was one of the estate managers as well, until the Linden was added to the estate ban as well by person / persons unknown.

Re writing a tpv to achieve this seems like a lot of effort to go to, unless there are already viewers out there that can be made to do this, I thought that tpv viewers had to meet LL aproval before they could be used, otherwise they were blocked.

 

Regards

 

 

 

 

[Malanya]

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Keyeung Attis wrote:

 

I tend to agree that what I am describing should not be possible, none the less to date this has happen five times, usually with a week or a little longer between episodes, this all started a few months ago with a griefer rezzing security orbs on the sim, these initially ejected people from the sim by way of returing them home. Again this was using disposable accounts, we locked the sim down by restricting who could rez objects and the attacks stoped for a while.

The owner has been in contact with LL and were running a performance and security evaluation on the sim, they thought that this was one of the estate managers as well, until the Linden was added to the estate ban as well by person / persons unknown.

Re writing a tpv to achieve this seems like a lot of effort to go to, unless there are already viewers out there that can be made to do this, I thought that tpv viewers had to meet LL aproval before they could be used, otherwise they were blocked.

 

Regards

 

 

 

 

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I KNOW it can happen as it happened to me. Someone was changing one of my sims (the sim is long gone now) region controls. A linden form tech came and checked out the security of my sim, actually 2 Lindens did while I was there. There are many TPV that can do things that are not so nice, that's a fact honestly. It could very well be an estate manager but very possible not.

I hope you get your issue fixed as I know how frustrating that can be. Good Luck.

edit: No there are TPV out there and are not blocked by any means. There is no actual approved list, just a list of viewers LL recognizes. The only viewer LL approves is the official viewer.

[Keyeung Attis]

 

Any suggestions of what we can do, as at the moment this seems to be an ongoing problem, I am wondering how you resolved this situation, or what LL were able to do for you, if your not comfortable discussing it on a open forum please feel free to send me a personal message as this is affecting our traffic.

 

reagards

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

Can the sim be closed to the public? Maybe set it so to get there, passes need to be sold, make the price high, refund the legit RPers and visitors their money? Maybe have the sim closed except for the access list? Cull the land group of anyone not trusted absolutely? Just some thoughts, I'm sorry you're going through this headache!

[Phil Deakins]

Doing those suggestions may deal with the problem, Lucretia, but the owner is paying LL monthly for the sim and s/he should have full use of it, which includes the inability of non-authorised SL users to ban people from it. As long as the problem exists, and if it really is a non-authorised person doing it, LL is not providing what the owner is paying for.

[GothGirl Demonia]

I would assume its possible for those who Don't know all the CopyBot and griefer viewers have what is called a message builder programmed into the viewers I assume that it is possible to put the right UUID strings into it and send packet messages to add other agents to Estate Managers on sims as if the owner did this, now it kinda gets tricky because everyone says its impossible which I am sure isn't true because from what I know all a person would have to do doing this if they had no other way of doing it is obtain the session ID of the agent logged into the region at the time, or maybe just logged into SL and send the packet request using their session ID which would have to be obtained when they login to SL however if they are using any TPV viewers beyond Linden Lab's default viewer this could be possible.

Again this comes from someone who woke up logged into SL to find the entire inventory deleted by a griefer, profile changed, and being told by Linden Lab less than 48 hours after that inventory could not be reverted which just proves that LL needs better security on players accounts, and better protection for players who spend real moeny in this simulation type MMO.

Pretty Sure there is a lot of grief type hacks going around, I did a google search and found Four Different griefer groups actively griefng in Second Life, and also searched for Second Life Brute Force, and found that there are griefers who have made a client which goes down a list of many second life names trying all known passwords and random login passwords until it hits one, so make sure to change and use a hard password you use nowhere else, I also would not download any illegal TPV viewers even to check them out as they contain keyloggers, and a lot of them contain radar hacks and IRC chatloggers/bugs which relays local chat to griefers and location in world, heck this type of stuff could be in any TPV unless you compile your own legit TPV from source and know what you are doing, although I would say Legal TPV's are more safe than the griefer ones.

Also Linden Lab thinking they are going to stop Money Laundry, or Transactions that are processed outside of  LindenX not going to happen and only way a person is going to get banned for doing such transactions is if they talk about it in world, or put in world ATM's however cashing out VIA third parties will always be at the person cashing out expense if its fraud L$ and LL removes it from their account, however its still possible to cash out via third parties as long as you can trade L$ in world sending to someone, or paying an object would have to get rid of the entire economy to stop it.

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

I agree with you Phil, I was just thinking of the short term until LL gets a handle on this and stops it. I have never heard of this sort of griefing before.

[Nova Convair]

When looking at this thread a simple question comes to my mind: If there is a security hole - why don't we see that action everywhere else? Banning the estate managers over and over again is just kiddie games. This simple minds would surely have spread that knowledge already.

I'd check for other possibilities:

- a manager
- a manager who's account is used by someone else

[Perrie Juran]

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GothGirl Demonia wrote:

 

Again this comes from someone who woke up logged into SL to find the entire inventory deleted by a griefer, profile changed, and being told by Linden Lab less than 48 hours after that inventory could not be reverted which just proves that LL needs better security on players accounts, and better protection for players who spend real moeny in this simulation type MMO.

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In another thread you said you were Phished.

Phishing is not a Security problem on Linden Labs end.

That is a Security problem in your own brain.

 

[Perrie Juran]

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Nova Convair wrote:

When looking at this thread a simple question comes to my mind: If there is a security hole - why don't we see that action everywhere else? Banning the estate managers over and over again is just kiddie games. This simple minds would surely have spread that knowledge already.

I'd check for other possibilities:

- a manager

- a manager who's account is used by someone else

 

 

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This is very interesting.  What would be more interesting is this:

If LL finds out it is one of the people who has the right to do Estate bans that is doing it, theoretically speaking, LL does not get involved in Resident disputes.  All LL would say is that they did not find a problem (security hole).

Then again, the Linden who was added to the Estate ban might take it personally.

[Phil Deakins]

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Nova Convair wrote:

When looking at this thread a simple question comes to my mind: If there is a security hole - why don't we see that action everywhere else?

Banning the estate managers over and over again is just kiddie games. This simple minds would surely have spread that knowledge already.

I'd check for other possibilities:

- a manager

- a manager who's account is used by someone else

 

 

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I do like that observation. It makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.

[Malanya]

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Nova Convair wrote:

When looking at this thread a simple question comes to my mind: If there is a security hole - why don't we see that action everywhere else? Banning the estate managers over and over again is just kiddie games. This simple minds would surely have spread that knowledge already.

I'd check for other possibilities:

- a manager

- a manager who's account is used by someone else

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Well, let's see... one reason is because people don't like to bring attention to themselves when griefed in such a way, I'll let you figure out why without typing it, and then you may see that that makes sense. Of course there are many possibilities, there are always possibilities. Too bad I can't post the responses I received after my sim was checked out, it would clear up some of the "doubts of TPV and what they can do"

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[Malanya]

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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GothGirl Demonia wrote:

 

Again this comes from someone who woke up logged into SL to find the entire inventory deleted by a griefer, profile changed, and being told by Linden Lab less than 48 hours after that inventory could not be reverted which just proves that LL needs better security on players accounts, and better protection for players who spend real moeny in this simulation type MMO.

---

In another thread you said you were Phished.

Phishing is not a Security problem on Linden Labs end.

That is a Security problem in your own brain.

 

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Yes, reason seems to change with the flow of whatever thread posting too, just as I thought she couldn't come inworld anymore..from another thread.

Nice info she threw out there, that was stupid. Yet all her posts are about griefing and account stealing, etc. Makes me wonder..

[Kenbro Utu]

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Malanya wrote:

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Perrie Juran wrote:

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GothGirl Demonia wrote:

 

Again this comes from someone who woke up logged into SL to find the entire inventory deleted by a griefer, profile changed, and being told by Linden Lab less than 48 hours after that inventory could not be reverted which just proves that LL needs better security on players accounts, and better protection for players who spend real moeny in this simulation type MMO.

---

In another thread you said you were Phished.

Phishing is not a Security problem on Linden Labs end.

That is a Security problem in your own brain.

 

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Yes, reason seems to change with the flow of whatever thread posting too, just as I thought she couldn't come inworld anymore..from another thread.

Nice info she threw out there, that was stupid. Yet all her posts are about griefing and account stealing, etc. Makes me wonder..

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At least it didn't have any Bold lettering and Caps this time; although I appreciate her use of it, as I know instantly to skip over the message on sight.  

[Lucretia Brandenburg]

I would have thought this as well but that the OP stated "periodically we are finding all of the estate managers are being placed upon the land ban list" ... were it not that SL has been so out of sorts, I'd play around with that and see if I can ban myself from the estate I manage, but the last time we were experimenting with one of the sim owner's alts, even though we removed the name from the ban list, he remained banned from the sims. Regardless, I also didn't think it was possible to ban Lindens. Banning oneself from an estate seems a bit extreme for a nasty prank.

[Alicia Sautereau]

Only conclusion for me is that it is some one from the staff

If i was a griefer and could access the estate panel, i`d have whiped the sim clear and banned everyone and do that all over the grid, this is not griefing but as said childsplay to annoy 1 or 2 specific people (another estate manager) heh

Check for drama signs since it started, bound to have been a little argument between staff befor this started to happen

[Leia36]

There is a similar type griefing in a very popular chat sim at the moment, for the past 2 weeks more than 10 times a day, 95% of the people in the main parcel get all logged out simultaneously. LL is investigating, while the sim owner pulls out his hair as he loses traffic. Another recent attack was like a mass effect bump hud, everyone on the parcel that wasn't sitting down got pushed to the far end of the map.

Griefing will become far more prevalent in the next few weeks, summer and schools/colleges going on brake will result in a large number of bored kids, who have taken the younger generation's fascination with griefing or trolling to heart. SL gives them that ability because it is free.

[Keyeung Attis]

 

Intersting reading, just an update to the situatoin, we have gone through the people that have access to the estate management list, again and are certain that this action is not being carried out by any of our staff. We are an active well established role play community so I dont want to close the region to public access or charge for passes even as this will severly hurt the community and is precisely what the perpetrator wants to happen. 

The estate managers are all active members of the region so I'm thinking that had one of their accounts been compromised they would know about it, IE the perpetrator would be doing other things with their account. The thing that does puzzle me somewhat is placing people on region ban is annoying but simple to fix, there are much more cripling things that could be done.

 

regards

 

[Alicia Sautereau]

Revoke all estate managers rights for a week and see if it stops

[Senobia Xenga]

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Keyeung Attis wrote:

 

we have gone through the people that have access to the estate management list, again and are certain that this action is not being carried out by any of our staff. 

 

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 How are you 'certain', because they said they didn't do it? Make a pinky promise?

[Senobia Xenga]

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Alicia Sautereau wrote:

Revoke all estate managers rights for a week and see if it stops

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One by one, a week at a time, unbeknownst to anyone. When it stops, you'll find your answer.

[Alicia Sautereau]

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Senobia Xenga wrote:

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Alicia Sautereau wrote:

Revoke all estate managers rights for a week and see if it stops

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One by one, a week at a time, unbeknownst to anyone. When it stops, you'll find your answer.

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Doing it one by one will warn the others

Revoking all at once to see if it stops will sent a crystal clear message to the estate managers, then add them back one by one after a week without telling them

If it starts again, it`s easier to backtrack to the person given the access back again

Let the estate managers fight it out and blame eachother for the actions of a child, but squash the bull**bleep** with a giant boot even if good help is hard to find.

 

They should be glad i`m not the estate owner, i`d have banned the whole lot of them and let them fight it out while very slowly let them return to the position heh