Risk: Informational
During November, the online world Second Life suffered from a self-replicating grey goo worm planting spinning gold rings around the virtual world. As Second Life 'residents' interacted with the spinning rings, servers at Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, ground to a halt and had to be taken down to clean up the worm.
Linden Lab states on its official blog that is investigating methods to minimise the threat of grey goo attacks: "There have been many suggestions regarding the regulation of scripting and we are in fact looking at technical options which will allow only 'trusted' Residents to fully utilize LSL across the grid. It is planned that "Trusted" Residents will be clearly defined, and there will be processes in place (not all payment oriented) to become "trusted" if your account currently falls outside of that designation." Linden also states that it is planning to hand over information that it holds on attackers to Federal authorities.