Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

[TomTom]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

Is there actually a security threat on MS? (I am saying that non sarcastically) Just curious, has anyone tried to "hack" into it or whatever?

Several times, yes but Kamal is on the bear patrol to catch these ass clowns.

[Kamal]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

Yea Feb wasn't a good month, guy walked into one of our servers and tried to make a mess. Although I caught him in time and managed to boot him.

[Dhar_2]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

^ how the hell did he get in??

[Kamal]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

its still completely unclear but from what I understand, there was a spanking new vulnerability discovered in the kernel of Fedora Core that he may have exploited. Other than tracing his steps and doing a massive review of the logs (and not finding anything concrete that shows his entry point), its like he magically walked into the server with a username + password and was able to upgrade that account to userid "0" (i.e. God Mode). Thankfully the system alerted me (I've setup certain triggers that, for obvious security reasons, I won't list) and was able to see exactly what he was doing and which accounts he compromised.

Then it was a matter of tightening the server, hardening it more, upgrading the kernel, shutting down even more ports bla bla bla bla.

The guy was pretty good cause he had forged his IP and I was unable to do a tracert, which is something I personally haven't experienced before. In most cases, even if the firewall / Machine has been disabled to respond to ping, you can at least run a partial traceroute to an IP and it ends a couple of hops before the target machine. But I was unable to even do that with his IP, which tells me it was forged. Running a GeoLocation on the IP indicated it was coming out of Saudi Arabia, which of course I imagine was nonsense.

[threehills]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

^ but what could he have done once he was in? Deleted posts? Spam?

[Kamal]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

typically they hack servers to

- get a list of passwords for accounts so that they can set it up as a backdoor for future logins. the guy was running John the Ripper (which is a brute force cracking program for snagging passwords against the hashed passwords file)

- setup the box to become dummy machines in order to carry out DOS/DDOS attacks

- spam the internet to ruin other people's lives and steal identities (as they do with the Bank of America scam email), which is something this dude had planned to do as he compromised an account and downloaded a zip file labled "Bank of America".

[Dhar_2]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

its like he magically walked into the server with a username + password and was able to upgrade that account to userid "0" (i.e. God Mode).

yike!

what was he upto?

i've never understood why people hack sites like ours. government sites and banks, etc. makes sense!

[Kamal]

Re: Possible Forum Update Today / Upcoming Downtime

ok upgrade will be happening today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dhar_2]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

booooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cant u wait till i've finished work???

[Kamal]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

upgrade wont start for the next 2 - 3 hours.

[Dhar_2]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

excellent mr bond!!

at least it will keep me occupied at work!

[Kamal]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

board updated, we're pretty much running stock, things will gradually start returning to normal. please bear with us.

[NoOne]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

What's the reason I haven't seen the the download option in the menu panel? Last week I could download the Hernan's sets, but not today...

[TomTom]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

The reason is...drumwhirl....the forum upgrade lol. The board is back so you can continue to post but not all functions are back yet. We use a heavily modified version of this software for all the gimmicks which need to be reinstalled and adjusted so give it some time.

[Huggie Smiles]

Re: Apr 29 UPDATE: Forum Upgrade Today / Upcoming Downtime

I'm assuming its the same reason - but the embedded youtube vid's dont work either.
No need to respond if tis just a matter of time.