We’ve seen a resurgence of “griefers”, avatars who use the OpenSimulator platform to ruin the experience of others rather than to enjoy a pleasant space to meet and create.
To facilitate the intervention in case of an attack, we have created a script that, based on a user’s name, generates the necessary code to delete his account, ban his alternative avatars and delete all their objects. This script is destructive and cannot be undone, it is essential to make a backup of the database and check the generated SQL code before executing it.
The script is available on GitHub :
tl;dr
I’m not a fan of giving attention to people who do silly things to get it. But when this poses a problem that affects multiple grids, then it is useful to share the info.
This attraction of griefers for destruction is probably due to traumas going back to childhood, but it is not up to us to make a diagnosis, there are psychiatrists in the real world for that. We had already observed this kind of actions about ten years ago (we had almost forgotten Jack Marioline).
The last user in need of neurons has the name of Priscilla Kleenex. He or she has created accounts on at least half a dozen grids that we know of and uses them for attacks locally or on other grids.
The method is simplistic and can hardly be called a hack: create self-replicating objects, which ruins the visual space of course, but above all overloads the servers quickly. As the objects multiply themselves, it is difficult to intervene when the grid is online, the intervention being slower than the multiplication, it is preferable to put the whole grid offline and act directly on the database.
We have of course taken the necessary measures on Speculoos World, but this is a temporary measure, the user could reappear with a new account and start again, we remain vigilant.
If you have any useful information on this subject, please contact us to share it.
HypergridBusinness also devotes an article to it: https: //www.hypergridbusiness.com/2022/07/opensim-grids-getting-better-at-handling-griefers/.