Filed under: Exploits, News items, Second Life
According to Dusan Writer, the Instant Messaging portion of the Second Life grid network protocols contains location information about every avatar who sends an IM to you. It’s been known for some time that the fields designed to encapsulate that information were present (though only the estate information was available to the recipient via the Second Life viewer) but it has not been clear that the information about the location of the sender was actually filled in.
Apparently, it is — and it isn’t really that hard to get at, for anyone who can implement the protocol, use an existing library or modify and rebuild the viewer source code. This might be considered something of a faux pas, as a similar information leak a couple of years ago required considerable retooling of protocols to avoid anyone who wanted to know your business from … well, knowing your business.
Continue reading Second Life grid protocol leaks avatar locations?