The BBC is reporting that replicating gold rings have slowed down the Second Life persistent online world.
The self-replicating worm planted spinning gold rings around the virtual world, which is inhabited by more than a million users.
Players treated the attack with a mixture of mirth and anger.
"Can this game get any more unpredictable and exciting?" asked one user, Loretta Lurra on the official Second Life blog.
As users interacted with the rings they replicated, resulting in a slowdown on the servers used by Second Life's creators Linden Lab, in California.
Joystiq reports that the "rings" were similar to the rings found in Sonic games. Last month Boing Boing had posted that the grey goo attacked was started by a griefer. Wired's Game|Life blogs that Second Life can expect many more griefers if they can't get a handle of this problem. The Guardiansays the replicating goo has raised the CopyBot issue. The CopyBot allows copies of part or all of Second Life objects to be made which threatens Second Life designs and economy. This simple question from the Guardian explains the problems a CopyBot could pose for the virtual economy: "What would happen to business and society if you could easily make a copy of anything - not just MP3s and DVDs, but clothes, chairs and even houses?"
The BBC is 
