This morning, L&L Bank and Trust (LNL) in Second Life, announced that their ATMs had been hacked. Maelstrom Baphomet wrote a heated blog post about the topic. Later, he wrote detailing reports of various banks hit by the hacking.

LNL which had been trading in a range of L$ .53/.67 slid on the news. Buy orders disappear as the range widened to L$ .15/.56 before trading was halted. Trading is scheduled to resume tomorrow, however it is not yet clear when LNL’s ATMs will resume operations.

Tyrian Camilo if Second Life Investor’s bank has this write-up of the days events, and Nobody Fugazi has this. Cristopher Whitfield of Royal Bank SL provides this additional information

It seems as if everyone is quick to point a finger somewhere and bemoan yet another problem with the capital markets in Second Life. One person observed, “At least we have totally new reasons for bank crisis.” I noted that given enough time, people will create even better banking crises in Second Life.

Yet I remain optimistic about the capital markets in Second Life. People have pointed out that it is like the Wild West. There is plenty of fraud, stealing, and anything else you can think of. Yet like the Wild West, there are opportunities for the wise player.

Update: Luke Birdbrain, Chief Communications Officer for LNL Bank and Trust. When asked about updates, he referred me to SlCapex, lindsaydruart.blogspot.com, and myllbt.com. I noted that there had been no update about the L$ 3.2 million. He wouldn't answer my question, so it appears as if the L$ 3.2 million has not been recovered.

In a follow up he essentially said that he doesn't care about the opinions of investors or depositors.

Whatever the case, Luke Birdbrain's responses are not the sort of responses I would want my Chief Communications Officer giving on behalf of any company I ran.