Was the discussion board cleaned up or something?

AFAIK the forum suffered yet another hacker attack. I guess hackers like videogames and hate board games. :-/

Seo

But do you think Darke has a recent backup, or a lot of messages are lost?

I wish we could help you in any way. This feels like a burglar went into the house. :-(

Seo

Me, I think the world is full of wonderful loving things, with everyone stuggling within their limitations. There are a few folks who are very unpleasant, but the vast, vast majority are good, kind people.

-- Matthew

Lets make a game out of this!

Any ideas for a theme...?...

Rob

I know what you mean. I recently joined a HeroScape discussion site. This site was hacked millions of times when I was there for a few short weeks. I cant imagine how many times the site was hacked before I got there.

For some odd reason though that site was also ran on PostNuke. Does a server (or whatever its called) have to do with the amount of hacks. Like maybe PostNuke is easier to hack or something similar.

Hope the messages are back soon.

Justin

It's not so much that PostNuke is easy to hack, as it is that there are a ton of PostNuke sites, and people get pissy for whatever reason and focus on hacking one. And then the exploit flings through the hackersphere at the speed of asshole.

All CMSes (Content Management Systems) are similarly vulnerable. When someone writes a custom site, there may be lots of security holes, but a hacker can't use a direct exploit from a previous site to exploit the custom one, generally.

Apparently Heroscape.net gave up and is moving their stuff over the the BGG, in a more limited format. That sucks (having to give up).

Darkehorse has done a great job here, applying security patches. In this particular case the hack doesn't appear to necessarily be a code exploit.

-- Matthew

1-There is already a game about hackers made by steve jackson games. I currently have it, the idea is cool but the game is average. The game is pretty long, but there is a few rules to shorten the game. The main problem is that there is no reason which can stimulate an hacker to invade this system rather than that system. Like illimunaty, I intended to make some additional cards in order to improve the game play. It could be some kind of job assignment to gain VP like : Get info on this VIP site, upload your porn on this server, place your trade mark on this server, etc.

2- Don't you have some kind of firewall. If you block almost all the ports, it should not be too bad. If you are running on linux, my friend intend to install something called "bastille linux" which add many security features like for example blocking distant root login.

3- Finally, a message for the hacker themselves. When you hack, you hack in style and it must have a good purpose. Hacking websites and placing your trademark on the front page is OK. Stealing information or busting servers of huge corporation, or any other greedy person, is OK. Cracking commercial software and make it available to the world is OK.

But hacking a Forum, what are you going to gain. No fame, No profit or no loss of profit. In fact, it is useless. You become a simple nuisance. At least do something good so that we can all say "Cool, he is good, he did it". I was so happy when I learned that a group of japanese had sucessfully cracked DRM 10 security for wmv and wma files. THAT is cool! But deleting data this forum was not a fun joke. At most placing your name on the front page would have been acceptable.

It wasn't firewall related. It had to do with my forum mod account being compromised ... and that makes me grumpy.

I disagree with so much of what Larienna has to say under his point #3. The part I do agree with is that it is rather pointless to delete forum posts in a helper community like this. So you figured out a way to do it? Great ... drop a helpful e-mail to one of the admins/mods to let us know where we are vulnerable and we'll fix it.

Purposefully causing strife to anyone is simply not cool.

-Bryk

Hi,

I didn't read this whole thread for lack of time, but I must ask. Since I see we suffered a hacker attack, could this explain a problem I've been having here at the site: whenever I get a pm, the site send a notice to my regular e-mail address I follow the link here, and there's nothing there. The pm is gone, missing, non-existent. What's up with that?

Live long and prosper, Qundar out.

Totally unacceptable. I don't mean to rail aginast you in particular, but your flippance is offensive considering the total amount of time has been wasted undoing the damage of so many petty hackers to this site. Hacking is illegal and offensive regardless of the target.

I for one admire Darke and all admins for the time spent keeping this site going for I thoroughly enjoy the interplay of ideas that happens here. The only thing that hacking does is to bring the good people in charge of this site one step closer to throwing up their hands and saying it's not worth it. No one wants that to happen.

Hi,

I must say, I can see what she means by this. I don't agree with her (I assume she is a she), I think it is wrong in every way. But she has a point. Boy, that sounds very contradictory. Hope I make sense. But I do admire those in charge as well and hope this site continues to operate.

Live long and prosper, Qundar out.

Next time you get such a beast, Q, send me a PM with the url that was sent to you and I'll try to figure it out.

-- Matthew

Hi,

Sure thing, I'll do that as soon as I get such a notice. I was in the middle of discussing stuff with a member here, and now I can't. I hope that other person hasn't thought I've forgotten about them or anything.

Live long and prosper, Qundar out.

Ok, it looks like I am the bad guy here (^_^).

My point is that you generally do something for a purpose that is generally good for the hacker. The person who hacked the forum simply had nothing to do with his life and just wanted to make trouble.

I dont say that violating private property is good. I just say that if you have a good cause behind your actions it is less bad.

Just a fictional example, in star wars : The rebels, which are the good guy in the movie, violate many laws and blow up many thing. The reason is that they want to remove the imperial oppression. So they have a good reason. In this case, it is OK.