CHANGES TO SITE, POST-HACKING - 2007/01/28 14:08 Hi everyone,
For those who don't know, last night we were hacked into by a fairly competent hacker. Thankfully, we managed to retrieve all the files, and the wonderful Dust (my partner) has worked hard all morning to find where and how this security leak enabled what happened. Usually, the whole site has to be flushed to stop them coming back, but Dust's a pretty nifty web developer and has isolated where this happened.
So, thankfully, it's only the private message system for our registered users (I say "thankfully", because if it was anything more major, we'd have to go ahead and start again). So this means for registered users, we have removed the private messaging system (in your inbox) until we find a more secure way of offering this feature. Sorry, but as long as it's there, it basically means there's a third party in our site with not very kind intentions, and they can just keep deleting all our files. So we will try to offer this service again (I know a lot of users use it - including me), but until such a time, we have to get rid of the present one.
So, at the end of the day, things worked out not so bad. At three this morning, we thought things could be rather grim! So nice try, hackers, but you've managed to achieve nothing than a slight hiccup on a Sunday morning when we have the least user flow. Well done.
So... let's get on with the show, shall we?!
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aaron Admin
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Re:CHANGES TO SITE, POST-HACKING - 2007/01/28 14:35 Hi again,
And can I just use here to thank all the people who have already sent emails of support. Thanks so much everyone, it really does mean alot, and it's great to have that support there in the difficult moments of running this site! I received about 40 emails this morning, so don't feel offended if yours isn't on the Your Say page. I'll randomly pick a few and put them up (I think it's great for the bastards to see some for themselves!), but I won't put up all 40, and there's only so many times I can thank everyone without it sounding silly, so if my individual responses to each letter gets a little basic, that's all it is.
So a big thankyou to everyone!
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terrapin Platinum Boarder
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Re:CHANGES TO SITE, POST-HACKING - 2007/01/28 15:23 so anyway, the last thing I typed in chat this morning was:
shit aaron, check out the site!!!
truly surreal.
Yay Dust, you obviously know what you're doing!
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aaron Admin
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Re:CHANGES TO SITE, POST-HACKING - 2007/01/28 15:30 Lol, I know! And I was just about to go to bed and finally get some sleep! The iorny is, the last thing I typed in the chatroom was "well, I must finally sleep before my mind officially implodes from the fatigue", and next thing you know, here's this flag, and this music, and this joyous message telling me I'd been hacked! Last night was just "one of those nights", I think! And we'd had the biggest numbers yesterday that we'd had in a very long time. It was all just too much, I can't tell you how deep the coma was that I finally fell into when my head hit the pillow at 3.30am! And God bless Dust, he got up early and started working on it, so he ctually woke me with the news that he'd fixed it and the site was back up. Which I wasn't at all expecting - I turned to him last night and said, "Tell me the truth, is this going to be like the others, or are we fucked, this time?" and he just gave me this worrying look! So it went from one extreme to the next, and it was great news to wake to!
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RedEye Platinum Boarder
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Re:CHANGES TO SITE, POST-HACKING - 2007/01/28 16:42 Congrats Aaron and Dust for getting the site back online so quickly; Dust is indeed a marvel!
Must say I had a quick visit this morning and was sad to see your notice, but not surprised. I know it's happened before and I guess it'll happen again
I know you won't let this stuff stop you saying what needs to be said. I hope it goes without saying that the 'beautiful people' are all behind you
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aarondarc Admin
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Re:CHANGES TO SITE, POST-HACKING - 2007/01/28 16:46 Thanks Redeye and everyone
THE MIC 
