Did anyone see this?

[Tom]

phpBB was attacked in a BIG way!!

Last updated: 8th February 2005, 02:08 GMT

At present www.phpbb.com is offline due to a group of politically motivated hackers wishing to use an opensource project to push their agenda ... shame on them.

We have some possible further details of the events which led to the loss of www.phpbb.com. Though I have not spoken with them myself I have learnt through an intermediary the group that appears to have attacked phpbb.com did indeed use a vulnerability in awstats to gain entry to our server (note the singular use of server there, we don't own a server cluster, just a server).

Since it would be totally inappropriate in this situation to simply "restore" (without investigating what happened we could simply be restoring an already vulnerable system) the box is being shipped from its datacenter to our server manager. There it will be analysed so we can confirm just what happened. Of course a full reinstall will then be performed after recovering the database. This will take some time. We are hoping to have an intermediate solution but there are no guarantees this is doable, or even worthwhile given the time frames. As I said before, best guesstimates for a return are from tomorrow (8th Feb) through to the end of this week.

To our community, please do not ask us for further updates as to the situation, its cause, etc. Everything we have to say is said here. Our support channel (#phpbb) on IRC has at times been swamped with "What happened? Any news?" style questions which are making it extremely difficult to support users with real issues. So we appreciate the interest but please, accept that we have nothing else to add.

Users in need of support with phpBB 2.0.x can visit our development board, area51.phpbb.com where such support is being offered at this time. Of course you can also view the next version of phpBB, 3.0 "Olympus" in the process (minus the new style of course!). We are also maintaining our IRC support channel, #phpbb on the irc.freenode.net network

Again we apologise for any problems this may cause our userbase. We obviously take the huge support our community gives phpBB very seriously. And we will do our best to return to "normal operations" just as soon as we can.

psoTFX - phpBB Group

[Boogeyman]

phpBB was attacked in a BIG way!!

Last updated: 8th February 2005, 02:08 GMT

At present www.phpbb.com is offline due to a group of politically motivated hackers wishing to use an opensource project to push their agenda ... shame on them.

We have some possible further details of the events which led to the loss of www.phpbb.com. Though I have not spoken with them myself I have learnt through an intermediary the group that appears to have attacked phpbb.com did indeed use a vulnerability in awstats to gain entry to our server (note the singular use of server there, we don't own a server cluster, just a server).

Since it would be totally inappropriate in this situation to simply "restore" (without investigating what happened we could simply be restoring an already vulnerable system) the box is being shipped from its datacenter to our server manager. There it will be analysed so we can confirm just what happened. Of course a full reinstall will then be performed after recovering the database. This will take some time. We are hoping to have an intermediate solution but there are no guarantees this is doable, or even worthwhile given the time frames. As I said before, best guesstimates for a return are from tomorrow (8th Feb) through to the end of this week.

To our community, please do not ask us for further updates as to the situation, its cause, etc. Everything we have to say is said here. Our support channel (#phpbb) on IRC has at times been swamped with "What happened? Any news?" style questions which are making it extremely difficult to support users with real issues. So we appreciate the interest but please, accept that we have nothing else to add.

Users in need of support with phpBB 2.0.x can visit our development board, area51.phpbb.com where such support is being offered at this time. Of course you can also view the next version of phpBB, 3.0 "Olympus" in the process (minus the new style of course!). We are also maintaining our IRC support channel, #phpbb on the irc.freenode.net network

Again we apologise for any problems this may cause our userbase. We obviously take the huge support our community gives phpBB very seriously. And we will do our best to return to "normal operations" just as soon as we can.

psoTFX - phpBB Group

I wonder if the hackers might be the SUDAKIAN INVASION SKUADRON better known as SIS. They seem to be politically motivated and are using the AGDI board for pushing their agenda - the elimination of Fribbi just because he is different.

[Alistair]

I wonder if the hackers might be the SUDAKIAN INVASION SKUADRON better known as SIS. They seem to be politically motivated and are using the AGDI board for pushing their agenda - the elimination of Fribbi just because he is different.

Interesting. Didn't that guy make that demo of a LSL3 remake?

Those hackers are complete bastards. What selfishness, to stuff up a vast number of online communities simply to push your own personal goals.

Cheers for the link, Tom.

- Alistair

[Ghost_Rider]

Some people just enjoy destroying things, hacking into things, creating a virus, etc.  Certainly not very mature.  I say it's much like one kid kicking down another kid's sand castle because it was bigger and better.  If they're so good at figuring these things out, why not use it to gain something out of life?  No one wins when they do this kind of thing.

[Blanka]

I think without hackers everyone would get very lax.

Whatever doesn't take us down makes us stronger, right?..... Right? :S

[Ghost_Rider]

Indeed!  If people learn from their mistakes they can make their software better the next time around.  Would be nice if Micro$oft caught onto that.  They do seem to be improving - SLIGHTLY.   :wink:

Although it would be nice if people were not trying to break things, just for the "fun" of it... unfortunately, that's just not reality.