Griefers, Invisible Spawning Objects, and Weird Scripted Radio Towers [Updated!]

[Scylla Rhiadra]

So, tonight I spent a good hour and a half battling a griefer attack on the group-owned land for which i am an administrator. That it took that long to deal with him, and that he was able to come back after his first go for a second try, is due to the fact that it's a large group of various parcels that straddle parts of three regions, and that it's been so long since I dealt with something like this, that I'd forgotten half of the land tools at my disposal. (One of the "good" things about tonight was that it was a crash refresher course in land management.)

Without getting into too much detail, he was basically locating small parcels that for some reason one of my fellow administrators had left open with full rez rights and no autoreturn timings, and spamming the regions with objects. It took me a bit to realize he was probably using a driver's rez zone HUD to find these. I eventually worked out remembered how to return his objects en masse from each region, allowing me to return them almost as quickly as he was spawning them, and then, after a fun chase after him across three regions, he gave up and left -- hopefully for good.

I think I've managed to lock down all of the parcels now (using my own rez zone HUD, duh I'm such an idiot). And of course he's banned all over the place now. But I have three questions which hopefully someone can answer for me.

1) One of the things that confused me at first was that he had rezzed a number of giant buildings (and a large American flag, which may or may not be significant) on a parcel that did not have open rez rights, but was adjacent to one that did. How was he able to get these buildings onto a closed parcel? I assume he rezzed them in the free rez zone, and then "pushed" them across into the adjoining parcels? Does that make sense? Can you do that?

2) Whenever I TPed to the objects he was spawning, after his initial attack using buildings and the flag, I was totally unable to see them. According to area search, I was literally standing on them, but they weren't even visible using the show alpha option in my viewer. And these were fairly complex objects, generally 64 LI each. And there were dozens of them, all in a very small space, and all, as I say, completely invisible to me. I didn't need to see them to return them, fortunately, but this still has me puzzled. How did he do this?

3) He himself was not at the place where the objects were spawning. I was never able to actually nail him down, but I think he was at some height above me. I flew up nearly 1000 m. at one point, using my minimap to guide me, and still didn't see him. Is it possible to rez objects at that great a distance? Can one use one's cam to do this? (I've never tried.)

On the plus side, I've relearned all of my land tools, and I've got the area pretty well secured (I think, and hope), so as exhausting and upsetting as that was, I got some benefit from it. But I'd love to know the answer to these three questions.

Thanks!

[Orwar]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

1) One of the things that confused me at first was that he had rezzed a number of giant buildings (and a large American flag, which may or may not be significant) on a parcel that did not have open rez rights, but was adjacent to one that did. How was he able to get these buildings onto a closed parcel? I assume he rezzed them in the free rez zone, and then "pushed" them across into the adjoining parcels? Does that make sense? Can you do that?

   So, there's a trick to putting stuff outside of your parcel that's quite commonly used for stuff like driveways for Bellesiera homes and parcels connected to SL roads - rez the thing you want to extrude beyond your parcel, rez a prim cube, link the two with the prim cube as the root, edit linked and deselect the prim cube, move your stuff where you want it. Since the cube is the root prim, and it's entirely within an area you have rez rights ... It works. It may be that he did that. Or that he did something else. There's more than one loophole, I'm sure.

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

2) Whenever I TPed to the objects he was spawning, after his initial attack using buildings and the flag, I was totally unable to see them. According to area search, I was literally standing on them, but they weren't even visible using the show alpha option in my viewer. And these were fairly complex objects, generally 64 LI each. And there were dozens of them, all in a very small space, and all, as I say, completely invisible to me. I didn't need to see them to return them, fortunately, but this still has me puzzled. How did he do this?

   It may well just have been lag. Rezzing objects frequently take a while before they become visible. This often causes me some trouble as I'm a bit too impatient to sit around to see whether they'll appear or not, so I try again, and again, and suddenly 3 copies of the object appears! I think, but I'm not certain, that more complex objects may take longer to 'load in', and if they were 64-LI builds and the region already has a lot of stuff in it, it's very possible that it was still just loading on your end.

   I know you can monitor your texture loading queue with a keybind that I can't remember off the top of my head (I think .. F3 is in there ..?), I'm not sure if there's any similar tool for looking at whether there are any objects that are trying to be rendered ... That'd be useful.

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

3) He himself was not at the place where the objects were spawning. I was never able to actually nail him down, but I think he was at some height above me. I flew up nearly 1000 m. at one point, using my minimap to guide me, and still didn't see him. Is it possible to rez objects at that great a distance? Can one use one's cam to do this? (I've never tried.)

   Yes, you can rez stuff from an altitude. I can rez objects in my Linden Home from my photo platform - which is just over 2,000 meters in the sky. Camming there 'manually' is a bit of a pain though - I ended chucking one of my alts into my house so I could quick-cam to them from the radar; so if there were people around the ground, you can cam to them and pop things up around them, or move your camera from there.

   Also if you're hunting a griefer, using the radar can be a quick and easy way to spot them. It's the 'People' tab from your quick-buttons, open it and just double-click on a person's name in the list, and the camera snaps to them (you can also right-click them to choose teleporting to them).

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

1) One of the things that confused me at first was that he had rezzed a number of giant buildings (and a large American flag, which may or may not be significant) on a parcel that did not have open rez rights, but was adjacent to one that did. How was he able to get these buildings onto a closed parcel? I assume he rezzed them in the free rez zone, and then "pushed" them across into the adjoining parcels? Does that make sense? Can you do that?

Yes, if object entry is ticked for that particular parcel.

 

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

2) Whenever I TPed to the objects he was spawning, after his initial attack using buildings and the flag, I was totally unable to see them. According to area search, I was literally standing on them, but they weren't even visible using the show alpha option in my viewer. And these were fairly complex objects, generally 64 LI each. And there were dozens of them, all in a very small space, and all, as I say, completely invisible to me. I didn't need to see them to return them, fortunately, but this still has me puzzled. How did he do this?

He didn't, SL (or more accurately your viewer ) does this, things take a while to rezz, especially large and complex things.

 

2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

3) He himself was not at the place where the objects were spawning. I was never able to actually nail him down, but I think he was at some height above me. I flew up nearly 1000 m. at one point, using my minimap to guide me, and still didn't see him. Is it possible to rez objects at that great a distance? Can one use one's cam to do this? (I've never tried.)

Drop a small prim with a timer that waits (or detects when the owner is no longer within range, do the rezzing, then self-delete. A clever one might also scoot around hither and thither to add to the confusion.

 

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 hours ago, Orwar said:

So, there's a trick to putting stuff outside of your parcel that's quite commonly used for stuff like driveways for Bellesiera homes and parcels connected to SL roads - rez the thing you want to extrude beyond your parcel, rez a prim cube, link the two with the prim cube as the root, edit linked and deselect the prim cube, move your stuff where you want it. Since the cube is the root prim, and it's entirely within an area you have rez rights ... It works. It may be that he did that. Or that he did something else. There's more than one loophole, I'm sure.

Thanks for the response, Orwar.

I'd thought of something like this, but I suspect it would have involved more work than he was willing to undertake. The objects scattered over the no-rezz parcel were, with the exception of the American flag (which did seem deliberately placed), dumped kind of higgledy-piggledy.

What is interesting is that during the active griefing attack -- which is to say, when he was dumping crap on the region while I was actually there, responding -- he didn't bother doing this: all of the objects were placed in two small parcels (one was 16x16 m) that I subsequently discovered had been left as open rez zones. So his initial attack -- when I wasn't there -- may have been more thoughtful.

6 hours ago, Orwar said:

It may well just have been lag.

Certainly possible, although I rarely have much rez lag at this sim; it's not very full, there aren't a vast number of textures, and of course it's my "home," so it's well-cached.

 

6 hours ago, Orwar said:

Yes, you can rez stuff from an altitude. I can rez objects in my Linden Home from my photo platform - which is just over 2,000 meters in the sky. Camming there 'manually' is a bit of a pain though - I ended chucking one of my alts into my house so I could quick-cam to them from the radar; so if there were people around the ground, you can cam to them and pop things up around them, or move your camera from there.

Yeah. He was certainly at a different elevation, according to the mini-map. And, as I said, I couldn't find him lower than about 1000 m. -- and believe me, I looked hard.

6 hours ago, Orwar said:

Also if you're hunting a griefer, using the radar can be a quick and easy way to spot them. It's the 'People' tab from your quick-buttons, open it and just double-click on a person's name in the list, and the camera snaps to them (you can also right-click them to choose teleporting to them).

Good tip. Thanks!

Not that I'm sure what seeing or confronting him directly accomplishes. Except allowing me to hurl abuse at him in local rather than IM.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

5 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Yes, if object entry is ticked for that particular parcel.

THIS I hadn't thought of. Object entry is indeed ticked. I'll fix that.

5 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

He didn't, SL (or more accurately your viewer ) does this, things take a while to rezz, especially large and complex things.

As per my response to your Orwar, you're probably correct. He was spawning complicated stuff so quickly (I mean, dozens of objects every few seconds) that it's hardly surprising that I couldn't see it.

5 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Drop a small prim with a timer that waits (or detects when the owner is no longer within range, do the rezzing, then self-delete. A clever one might also scoot around hither and thither to add to the confusion.

That seems possible. He didn't scoot around, however, until I started chasing him.

Thanks for the replies, Prof!

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Ok, so . . .

I did a reasonably thorough inspection of the property this morning, and all seems to be ok.

I did, however, see this, which belongs to him, on a nearby parcel of abandoned land. That's the property I administer in the background. Again, I'm not sure how he got it there: I'm standing at the nearest rez zone, which is quite distant. It was placed there 3 days ago.

At the risk of sounding (increasingly) paranoid, there are two things about this object which worry me.

The first is that the sim name has been appended to the object name: it's called "hvguplink.Flagg"

The second is that it contains a script, which I can't examine, called "node.api."

The fact that it is in the shape of a huge radio tower is  not necessarily important, obviously, but it also seems suggestive.

Any thoughts?

Edited March 5, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Contact LL, there's a hint in what you've posted that reminds me of the time there were two giant letters rezzed in the sky that only Lab staff were able to remove. If there's a new exploit they will be able to glean some information from the scripts,.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Contact LL, there's a hint in what you've posted that reminds me of the time there were two giant letters rezzed in the sky that only Lab staff were able to remove. If there's a new exploit they will be able to glean some information from the scripts,.

Thanks. How do you suggest? Ticket?

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Yes, I'd have thought you'd AR-ed them already on the initial attack. If you haven't,. do so, and add the extra information about the nearby land issue. It might be from there that the attacks were launched.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Yes, I'd have thought you'd AR-ed them already on the initial attack. If you haven't,. do so, and add the extra information about the nearby land issue. It might be from there that the attacks were launched.

No, I didn't AR him. I should have of course, but I was exhausted, and this ended at around 3:30 am my time, sooooo . . .

I'll AR him now. One of the interesting things is that this is not a throwaway noobie account. The griefer is over 10 years old.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The griefer is over 10 years old.

It could be a hacked account. 10 years ago is around the time of that incident of the two giant letters in the sky, I wonder if this is an anniversary visit?

When I first had a mainland parcel adjacent to one of the public highways we would often get graffiti on the walls of our buildings, or crashed cars pushed into the land, I spoke to one of the car-droppers once and it was just his sense of humour, he liked to leave drunk-driving incidents strewn around. No malice intended, the same with the taggers. If the person in question hasn't totally nuked your parcels by filling up the prim allowance or lagging them to a standstill with loads of marching Mario textures it's not the hard-core type of griefing, more like somebody with slightly twisted sense of humour.

[animats]

The main protection is setting autoreturn time. I leave some of my parcels open for rezzing and object entry, but autoreturn time is 20 minutes, so people can park vehicles. With autoreturn set, griefing will clean up automatically.

If your parcel has roadway or a parking lot, please don't turn off object entry. Anyone who gets out of their vehicle to shop will lose their vehicle.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

Yes, I remember my parcel where Anne Marie O'Toole's ice cream vans would often fly through the parcel chiming merrily after failing to get around the sharp left uphill bend... turning off object-entry did nothing at all to stop them because they had gone into an odd physics state and effectively ignored all parcel flags anyway. I had a chat with her once and she remarked it was really up to the Lindens to sort out their roads.

Autoreturn works up to a point, imagine somebody drops a prim that rezzes other prims, and just before the autoreturn time is about to kick it, it rezzes a copy of itself.

Group-rights to rezz, run scripts and enter objects is probably the strongest protection you can have for a parcel, with no rights to non-group residents.

[animats]

1 minute ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

Autoreturn works up to a point, imagine somebody drops a prim that rezzes other prims, and just before the autoreturn time is about to kick it, it rezzes a copy of itself.

For that, you ban them and report them to LL.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

33 minutes ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

If the person in question hasn't totally nuked your parcels by filling up the prim allowance or lagging them to a standstill with loads of marching Mario textures it's not the hard-core type of griefing, more like somebody with slightly twisted sense of humour.

This was definitely malicious. He's attacked at least three times over the course of 3 days, twice while I was present and both IMing him and responding in real time. On each occasion he was completely filling the land's LI capacity, at a pace that was literally almost faster than I could respond. He did not, I might note, respond to my IMs, and TPed to another part of the sim whenever I got close to him.

Interesting to note: I've just realized that the name of the radio tower object, "hvguplink.Flagg," includes the initials of the only group that appears in his profile, which may, by its description, be a quasi-vigilante or maybe Woodbury U-style griefer group: "Human Volunteer Guard." And the tower has been set to that group. The founder of the group, whose profile says he is roughly the same age as that of my griefer, is like my griefer's largely blank, showing just the one group. And their first life pic is of a shelf loaded with cans of . . . spam.

So, yeah, I'm increasingly convinced this was a deliberate griefing.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

"WU" were the giant letters in the sky that required LL invention to remove

[Scylla Rhiadra]

21 minutes ago, animats said:

If your parcel has roadway or a parking lot, please don't turn off object entry. Anyone who gets out of their vehicle to shop will lose their vehicle.

There is no direct access to the parcels from the highway, and it's not really a vehicle-friendly place anyway (lots of stairs and steep hills), so that's not really an issue.

At some point, I will probably reinstate rezzing rights on the smallest of these parcels, with autoreturn enabled. But not yet.

3 minutes ago, animats said:

For that, you ban them and report them to LL.

I've now done both of these things.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

"WU" were the giant letters in the sky that required LL invention to remove

Ahhhhhhhhh . . .

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

I think you're on the right track thinking this is "in the style of", I don't think it's a comeback. But after so long with people locked indoors it's not surprising that the jokers are starting to emerge again.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just a quick shout out and thank you to @Profaitchikenz Haikuand @Qie Niangao, who dropped by my land to check out the mysterious radio tower left by my griefer on an adjoining parcel. Thanks both!

Childe Scylla to the Dark Tower Came . . .

(Sorry. Lame Robert Browning joke . . .)

[Ceka Cianci]

if all else fails just throw down a block put this on all sides and throw it at them.. they'll be gone in 3 seconds..

That'll teach'um good.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Ceka Cianci said:

if all else fails just throw down a block put this on all sides and throw it at them.. they'll be gone in 3 seconds..

That'll teach'um good.

 

 Might work.

Or I could recite poetry at them next time they drop by.

[Arielle Popstar]

Obviously 5G tower so careful of the radio waves emanating from it. Could just burn it down like many others are doing! Flagg is probably a reference to Randall Flagg of Stephen King fame. Evil personified.

[Ceka Cianci]

1 minute ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

 Might work.

Or I could recite poetry at them next time they drop by.

Turn the echo up to 11, because their dial probably only goes to 10, so you would have them beat with 11, because 11 would be better....

[Scylla Rhiadra]

11 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Obviously 5G tower so careful of the radio waves emanating from it.

The same thought had occurred to me.

However, as all members of the group have already been implanted with microchips as part of the deal for the L$1,000,000 donation we received from Bill Gates, it seems silly to worry about it.