It started sometime Monday (we think). Reports started coming in about a password reset. Many account passwords have been reset due to "changes" in the system. We're not really sure how many. Hundreds, thousands, millions perhaps - it is hard to say. It didn't happen all at once, however, but seems to have been staggered across many hours.Linden Lab have held their silence since Friday, and we're honestly not expecting to hear an announcement about this at this stage. There are a number of reasons a password reset like this might take place. One, yes, would be a security breach, but if it was, you'd find that all the passwords would have been reset all at once. What is much more likely is that the encryption and storage systems have been reworked.
You see, Linden Lab doesn't actually know what your password is. They can change it, but they don't have a record of it. That means moving to a new encryption system means your password needs changing, and the best person to do that is you. On the plus side, the new password recovery system gives more options, though it is awfully slow (perhaps because of a lot of people trying to, you know, use it).
Golly, if only we'd been warned or told or informed or communicated with. Lots of people wasted a lot of time before they realized what was going on; Missed events, and missed appointments and some have been not been able to recover their password at all. Not been a lot of useful stuff going on in that communications area lately, though.
1. indeed we've been unable to login via the client for about an hour while the web transactions were off for 10 to 15 minutes
Posted at 8:13AM on Jun 5th 2007 by starcomber Vig