Second Life Currency Open to Theft

A pair of white-hat hackers claim to have found a vulnerability in Second Life (through an issue with QuickTime, which is used to stream videos in SL) that allows them to lift Lindens (SL's in-game currency) from SL residents. This is important because Lindens can be bought and sold for real money, and many (real) people make decent (real) money through SL activities.

The hackers have reported the glitch to Linden Lab, and expect that a simple patch will fix things. Linden Lab has notified SL users, but the fix may depend on Apple changing the QuickTime software rather than Linden Lab fixing SL itself.

Coverage at the San Jose Mercury-News and at Game Politics.