Folks,

I apologize for the outage.

We were hacked by what look like Russian or Ukrainian hackers. They do not appear to be interested in us specifically - it looked more like a general PHP hack that would have installed a malicious script on your PC. Thankfully their hack broke the site and none of you were able to get to it.

They did not compromise the database - just the site files.

Unfortunately we do not know yet how they did it. All appropriate security and permissions are in place on the sites files. Until I have more information we are vulnerable to this.

RV

We assume that you backup the database very often.

Regarding the malicious embedded script... we all need to keep our personal machine's defenses up-to-date.

Bob

thank you so much for sorting all this out. I freaked to think all this wonderful support and information was gone forever...

No problem N101CS, completely understandable and nothing to do with you at all. Thanks so much for getting things back up and running

Wow, I'm just so glad to have this place back, I've felt lost since it went down!

I checked over at MWO to see if there was any message from anyone here about what was going on, but didn't see anything. Would it be worth having a place somewhere else on the web (message board, blog, anything independent of this site) just to let people know what's happening if it happens again? Just a thought...

I expect a personal e-mail every single time there is the least hesitation in my service Not too harsh a message, nicely phrased please, with lots of smiles so I won't feel put out too much, oh, and not too early in the morning please, as I might be hungover and not appreciate too severe a jolt too early

I use twitter for status updates for a couple sites I maintain. Both services go down from time to time, but seldom at the same time

N101CS, Thanks so much for getting things back up and running I went to MWO too ask people if anyone know what was going on, ( thanks to those who got back to me) and while I was there I read
all your post -- great reading very inspiring, thanks

There were a couple of us over there at MWO - check the Strictly Sinclair thread. I also tried to see if anyone was at the spreadsheet page (where we can chat, no less).

Everyone: If this happens again, please don't freak out too badly. Even if the site was completely trashed I could always set it up from scratch - and would. In the future I'll put up a notice telling everyone to hold tight.

Thank your friendly moderators for catching this - I wasn't online when it happened.

Hi N101CS
On three occasions since the major outage i have tried to access the site only to receive an error message. It seems strange i tried earlier today and on two occasions i couldn't get through. I notice no one else has made any reference to this.