Second Life Data Theft Causes Headaches In Real Life

September 13th, 2006: San Francisco’s Linden Lab is reeling from an attack by hackers on September 6 that has left personal and financial records all its 650,000 customers potentially exposed.

Linden Lab runs Second Life, a highly popular online game where many thousands of people have created online fantasy lives for themselves. Hackers reportedly broke into one or two of Linden’s computers using a Zero-Day Exploit, from there a database of user information was stolen.

Real names, addresses, passwords and unencrypted payment information has been compromised. Although luckily “no unencrypted credit card information is stored on the database in question,” wrote Robin Linden in an urgent security announcement on the company’s blog. “Unencrypted credit card information has not been compromised.” Linden Lab has contacted all of its members and urged them to change their passwords, and as a precaution it has invalidated all account passwords.

Second Life’s users may be playing a game, however, this virtual world is blurs the line of reality by having its own functioning economy.

US$1 buys 300 Linden dollars for use in the game to buy goods such as clothes, virtual real estate and much, much more. While only half of the players spend money online, many characters run businesses and earn an income. Some are known to earn over six figures, which makes this security breech far more than kids play.

A number of large corporations such as Coca-Cola have set up shop inside the virtual world, as have prominent authors and musicians.

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