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The_One

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OK, basically things are a hell of a lot worse than originally thought.

 

The hacker managed to delete many crucial files and the database. This is bad. Our entire site (and team forums) is stored in that database. The only copy is the one on the server. So, apart from the interface - all the content on the website and posts on the team forums may have been lost. The hard drive is being sent to a specialist to see if the data can be restored - if not, I basically have to start again.

 

At the moment we can only hope that the data can be restored. But no-body is as pissed off over this as me. I have put months of effort into that website, and it will take me a hell of a long time to get it back to the state it was. Also, I imagine the team will be mighty pissed off that there is a chance all our 1000 or so posts on the team forum could be lost.

 

Please don't use this as a place to get angry or whatever. I just wanted to let you guys know there is a big chance the website won't be back for quite a while. The actual server is now back up - so I'll be putting up a temporary page soon, once our DNS resolves.

 

Thanks.

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Don't worry, we're all still there!!! :)

 

The progress of the DFMOD is - if at all -

slowed down for a short period,

but in no way stopped.

 

It is self-evidentially a bad time for The_One

who has done extraordinary work on the website,

and I'm confident he'll do the same great job

with the new pages. :p

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You guys already know how sorry I am about all of this...and I really hope this hacker is found and dealt with.

 

Good luck with trying to get the web site back up to speed...I know The_One will do a great job. I just wish there was something I could do to help you out, but I'm not a 1337 web designer.

 

Good luck, people. You rock. :cool:

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I can't believe that something like that happened. That is insane. Is there any way to protect a website database from that kind of attack? This hacker f***** might show up again.

 

Good luck, The_One. Your mod team has a lot of potentional, and I am sure that you will bring back things up to normalcy.

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Well, I was beginning to wonder what was going on...

...and now I wish I hadn't found out.

That's a total load of nerf waste. But we're still all here, and I know that we're all going to do what it takes to get back to where we were before.

 

MTFBWY. :stormmask

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Well, according to this story on mixnmojo, the hacker didn't actually delete anything. It was the incompetant *staff* at the webhost who lost all the data in attempting to make the server hackerproof...

 

Mojo, what they have done to you: a short story.

 

One of our hosted sites was running the "YABBse" forum script for their site's web board (Why they weren't using LucasForums is beyond me, of course ). The problem with this, is that just a couple of weeks ago an exploit was found in YABBse, that when exploited would allow the user to gain root access to the server. Yes, so some Brazilian ankle-biter Googled around for sites running YABBse, found our server, and made himself a home.

 

Fortunately, as far as we know, he wasn't malicious. He wasnt interested in altering any of our sites, or deleting our files. He just wanted free space and thought that he could get it somehow just by getting himself root.

 

This was why the site was up and down for a couple days last week. We were shutting down web services, rebooting and shutting down the server to generally keep him off. That isn't why we're down right now though.

 

It was finally realized that we'd need to reinstall the operating system on our server with a couple of patches to beef up its security to keep him off for good. At this point things started to go wrong.

 

The logical way to reinstall an OS on a server, you'd think, would be to back up all of the files, format the drive, do a completely clean install, and then copy the files back over from the backup drive. That sounds logical, right? That way you have a fresh server, and if things go wrong, you have a clean duplicate of the server from before the changes on the backup drive.

 

Well, the guy who runs our server at the colocation facility had other plans apparently. I don't know exactly what he did, but when he was done with the fixes, the server came back online without significant security fixes, and without a backup drive made. He also told us that in addition to there being no backup, there might be some data loss on the drive, but we're not sure yet. How did this happen? We don't know. Regardless, the hacker got back in within 40 minutes, and we shut the server down again.

 

At this point we've generally decided that it's time to move to a new location entirely. A totally new server at a totally new facility with a totally new admin. That is why the server has been down for days and days, and why the hard drive is on a plane or in a truck somewhere heading back to ZeroXcape.

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I have good news!

 

Data recovery has been possible. The data will be transferred to the new server tonight ;) But we are still re-designing the site. Hopefully the new site will be ready in just over a week's time.

 

All we have to wait for now is our domain to be sorted out, which is taking a little bit longer than I thought (currently, it's still pointing to the old server).

 

But you can expect everything to return to normal over the next few days. I'll give the team a shout when the team forums are back up :)

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