The virtual world of Second Life has been hit by a deliberate attack for the second time in under 3 weeks, taking it offline for up to five hours today while its maker, Linden Lab, applies an emergency patch. According to Linden Lab, a user-created object in Second Life's new-user Welcome Area began spitting out instant messages to the degree that the fabric of cyberspace was overwhelmed. Residents were kicked out while Linden Lab attended to the problem.

The first recent attack of a global nature ocurred on October 23, and involved a bomb-like deployment of millions of 3D objects, resulting in a 3-hour denial of service to Second Life residents. At the end of October, a much smaller attack involved a virus-like object programmed to hand out raunchy photos to unsuspecting passersby.

And if the deliberate attacks weren't bad enough, Second Life has been operating poorly since a significant upgrade was issued in late October. Since the upgrade to v1.7, extreme lag, missing resources, slow downloads and other major technical problems have plagued Second Life at a time when it is receiving more mainstream press--and more new users--than ever.