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Grey Goo Worm Crashes Second Life

The Second Life world came to a stop for 15 minutes on Sunday, as Linden Labs' servers were infected by a worm.

The worm that froze Second Life created gold rings multiplying as users tried to interact with them, pushing Linden Labs servers to their limit.

Linden Labs had to suspend all activity on servers, except for maintenance tasks (cleaning up the grey goo worm).

The Second Life World

Second Life (SL) gamers live in a 3-D virtual world, created since 2003 by San Francisco-based Linden Lab, founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale.

The Second Life experience lets users (referred to as Residents) view and modify the Second Life world and participate in its economy.

Residents (gamers) may have multiple accounts, and thus be multiple Residents. All scripts and 3D content are created by Residents using nothing but the client, and even though animations, textures and sounds have to be created outside the client, every experience in Second Life is entirely user-created.

Second Life's economy is based on Linden dollars (L$); one receives an amount of L$ when they open an account, and a weekly amount. One can even exchange real-life US$ for L$. Linden Lab's Second Life economy generated over US$3,500,000 in economic activity during the month of September 2005.