July 16, 2007
Are terrorists infiltrating the popular MMO Second Life?The Economist says yes:
Inevitably, experts say, jihadists have also started to create “residents” in the virtual world of Second Life.
Virtual World News, however, chats up security expert, Steve Davis (left), CEO of SecurePlay, who sees no real benefit for terrorists inside SL:
One wonders how [Second Life owners] the Lindens would respond to someone exercising their 'free speech' rights in advocating Jihad... it certainly would get a lot of press. I would expect at least one major political dirty trick in Second Life before the end of this presidential election...
If I was going to be a terrorist in Second Life, I’d just cause a Denial of Service in Second Life with a repetitive 'Bush Sucks' or something... These guys rely on the anonymity of the Internet. As such, they focus on basic services... not fancy stuff like 3D environments.
Davis does see possibilities for using Second Life to transfer money which could be used to finance terrorist operations:
The bigger concerns are in the area of crime and money laundering. Since it is pretty easy to steal online game accounts and sell them for money or gold farm, you are creating a pretty large underground economy. [...] It was interesting to read recently that a WOW account could be worth more than a credit card number - that has serious implications...
Comments
It's not as if there's any security practices to infiltrate through...
(And oooo, they might have signed up for LiveJournal, too. And Facebook. Damn those evil Terrorists!)
July 16th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
US intelligence spots a known al Qaeda fiend logging onto Second Life, makes a spiff of it. Wow. Who cares?"
WTF? This site needs user registration.
Not what he meant I don't think. What I think he meant is that the servers of Second Life are considered private property owned by Linden labs, thus, they control what speech is and sin't allowed on their servers, thusly, they can have their own constitution by which to run it.
I hope hat makes sense.
It's like how JT assumes we're censoring him, however, as this is a privately owned site, his argument is null.
Thats going to bug the hell outta me for a while.
To make everyone as miserable as they are?
Its not like they are a mysterious bunch. There motivations are simple. There motto is rather simple.
That was the Patriotic Nigras who performed both of those attacks. They are a griefer clan born from a site, of which I can not go into, but have staged many attacks on furries, the JLU, and random other events. They're main tactic is to flood the server with auto replicating objects that eventually cause it to crash, making muting rather pointless. They have many videos documenting these campaigns on youtube. Also, they kill servers by maintaining a loose affiliation with them. Being a third party, the rules do not apply to them.
I remember John Edwards getting attacked in SL, but that as Anon and/or /B/tard attack.
Who else has gotten hit?
Vote for me.. and I will protect you.
"It’s already been done dude, and it’s far from over. "
I wonder how many years it will take for a politician's Second Life to become public fodder. We keep hearing about more madams and all that rot, but what about all the closet-furries and transvestites? If not politicians, what about their campaign supporters who don't get accused of trying to make a quick twenty spot in a men's room? I can only imagine what the New York Times cover will do to some people who don't even have a 3D accelerated graphics card, let alone a broadband Internet connection. *brain explodes* This seems like the next striking ground for local law enforcement officers and teachers getting popped for indiscretions, along with Dateline working with law enforcement to entrap sickos online in SL.
It's already been done dude, and it's far from over.
What rules?
How much money can a group make on a game like Second-life? I know the value of the American dollar is drasticly high in Iraq (50 bucks can get you several low-grade AK-47's), but how much are people willing to pay for a second life character? I'm not sure how the game works though, so all I can do is ask questions.
Real money can be accumulated much easyer as far a I know. Like bootleging cigarets from low-to-none tax states to high tax states. Don't worry, I'm not giving out ideas, they already do this.
Though I do agree with the concern for gold-farming and what not. I actually find that to be some truth in it, but not enough to be believable.
A basic account on Second life is completely free and there are numerous free items one can get. And the value of 1 linden is less than an american cent, so, doing that kinda thing over Second Life isn't the best plan.
First and Second rules pal.
Since SL terrorists = greifers, we got nothin to worry about :P
Besides, typically another copy of what you build gets saved to your inventory, so if vandalism happens, you simply delete the damaged item and puts a new one in it's place
ALso, /b/ has already had their shining moment. A bunch of their members were banned permanently for building and partaking in a furrie death camp.
/b/ "c'mon furqfag, we gonna keel u"
random furrie: *mutes themand walks off*
Sorry for the bad language
@ Brokenscope
I'd better go tell my brothers to kiss thier asses goodbye then.
Of course, those Jihadists and other crazy religious cult people are just out to spoil our fun and cripple our way of life. These people have no idea that their faith is killing not only them but the people around them!
May the good spirits bless Kim Sun-li, for his soul is being meaninglessly claimed by the hands of those fucking insane Jihadists.
Anyone suspected of terrorism in Second Life, and that's how the president determines terrorism by the way, will be rounded up and shipped off to a Second Life version of Gitmo to be tortured.
I just can't see this being too much of a concern, I'm sorry.
Furries beware, your next on Osamas list.
For a start, sometimes creating 'Bush Sucks' in Second Life most certainly does NOT make them a terrorist, and secondly, anyone thinking that Al Quaeda would get perform their Jihad by destroying digital real-estate that in a worse-case scenario can simply be restored from an older database is, quite frankly living in la-la land. People who attack Second Life are griefers, not terrorists.
Hate to say it, but America seriously needs to get the Bogey-Man of Al-Quaeda out from under the bed.
You can just see the head lines now:
"...and so to protect your children from this terrorist game, we must remove it from the normal world, because the game makers are allowing them to function actively on Second Life, they are terrorists themselves..." -Some random idea
"If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist or help a terrorist, you're a terrorist." - George W (for Wanker) Bush
Like the song "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash says, "Sooner or later, God's gonna cut you down".