Hacking failed, L$ 50,000 paid after new competition

Is Second Life safe from hackers? Or is it at least safer than other online worlds like Habbo Hotel, where a 17 year old kid stole for about US$ 6,000 on virtual goods from another kid? Although innocent until proven guilty, he's at least brought to court and charged for this crime, so that makes hacking serious business.

DNBmedia, a Dutch company who is also the Dutch full-service partner of Linden Lab and has set up www.secondlife.nl, has the answer about security in Second Life. They are certain that this could never happen in SL, at least not by in-world hacking. About two weeks ago they started a hacking competition on one of their sims (read more here). The object was to hack into an in-world script stored inside a prim looking like a bar of gold, stashed away in a big vault. Getting to the prim was easy, but actually gaining access to the no-mod, no-copy, no-trans script apparently was too hard, or even impossible.

So, DNBmedia did a great job at actually blocking access, and has proven that Second Life is a safe place. According to DNBmedia employee Rickus Rodenberger:


"We did everything that is deemed normal for security measures. The fact that no-one could get in using a normal method, really shows that most of the hacking is done by gaining access to an account. And that is mostly due to people being careless with their account details."

When I talked to Mr. Rodenberger, I asked him if there was a back door, if it was a game. As he stated:

"No, this was not a game, there was no back door that we knew of. We considered this to be a serious test and treated it like that. Apparently SL is safe enough not to loose your inventory or rezzed objects or even your intellectual property rights to hackers."

So I asked Mr. Rodenberger what's next, after the hacking challenge. He said:

"Nothing concerning hacking anymore. We made our point and we can tell the world that SL is a safe place. However, we did still have the L$ 50,000 prize that we haven't had to pay to anyone. So last week's Thursday, at 4pm, a new competition started and we had a winner in under 4 hours! We stashed away 3 gold bars, hidden away on the 14 sims that we have developed so far. The person who found them first, won this follow-up competition, and of course the L$ 50,000. It was a big success."

As it seems, DNBmedia is quite dedicated to Second Life. In fact, they are a full-service partner of Second Life, so you can imagine that they were eager to show that Second Life is in fact safe, as long as you take your own precautions. Never give away your login details, and if you don't want to share the secret behind your designs with other residents, SL has plenty of tools and settings to prevent it.

Hack your way to 50 K !!!

Yes, you heard it right, you can win L$ 50,000 this week in a hacking competition at a sim called '0031 NO'. This is organized by DNBmedia, a Dutch company who provides several services in both Second and Real life. One of their main activities is maintaining the Dutch site www.secondlife.nl, where Dutch residents can buy L$ by paying directly from their bank account, amongst other things. The cluster of sims called 0031 are all aimed at Dutch people (+31 is the international dial code for the Netherlands), although everyone is welcome.


As a reaction to the drama that unfolded in another virtual world, Habbo Hotel (7 million residents world wide, aiming at kids and teens), where a 17 year old kid stole furniture from another kid's house. He did so by 'hacking' into the victim's account and thus transferring the furniture. Damages ran up to US$ 6,000 and this hacker has been arrested and will be charged with theft, stolen goods trade, digital trespassing and vandalism. That last one was because virtual goods are data. And if you remove data from an account, or server, that data is destroyed. DNBmedia set this hacking competition up as an experiment, to see how safe things are in Second Life.


I talked to Rickus Rodenberger, one of the DNBmedia people, to ask what the story was behind this competition. "We want to challenge everyone to hack us here. Our challenge is to show the world that Second Life is a safe place. If someone would actually succeed, it would be a great learning opportunity for us."

Taking the words of Mr. Rodenberger into account, there will always be a winner. If it's not a hacker that finds a way in, it is Second Life itself, for having things in order. Mr. Rodenberger says: "If there is fraud, it's mostly because of stupidity of people. For example if they reveal their account details."


About the challenge:

The prize is L$ 50k (about US$ 188) for anyone who can decode the script inside the vault, find a 10 digit code and an email address inside the script, and if you find it, you have won. Mind you, you have to do it within the boundaries of the Terms of Service that rule the world of Second Life. The competition lasts till November 21, 2007, even if someone actually hacks into it, there could be more than 1 way in. Right?

Location: 0031 NO (SLurl)