TOPIC: The forums were hacked and this is the replacement

Some stupid hacking group decided to hack into our forums today/yesterday.  They deleted all the posts but since we do a nightly (offsite) backup of the entire database only posts from this morning were lost.<br /><br />The phpBB forum software has been replaced with this software (punBB).  It is the only software that I could find that would reliably import the existing message database.  It is not as full featured as phpBB but it is more secure.  Here are the differences:<br /><br />1) Your avatars were not moved over, you'll need to upload them<br /><br />2) punBB does not have the concept of a private forum category so I did not move the admin and volunteer categories -- they are still in the database.  We'll figure something else out for the admin/volunteer discussions.<br /><br />Let me know what you think of this software and if you have experience using a different forum software that will automatically import phpBB messages please let me know.<br /><br />Thanks.

Wow. That sucks. And I'm sure it was a lot of work to fix.

Lesimony wrote: Wow. That sucks. And I'm sure it was a lot of work to fix.

Not too much but it does suck.

I honestly don't think these idiots realize what they put people though. I have decided that if I do ever meet anyone who brags about defacing a site I'm going to gut punch them as a proxy...

- Doug

Yeah I when I logged on at one am, I saw the site had been hacked and emailed Jeff.
I google searched the group and found a site for hackers. That group hit four forums last night/this morning. The site listed a couple vunerabilities in phpbb, that they may have used.
According Zone-H stats, most common hacks are through linux(58%), to .coms(41%), attacking method through configuration/admin. mistake(20.1%), for fun(32.7%).

GRR, so very annoying. At least the hacker in december wasn't malicious. This group was.
Thanks Doug for your efforts to tend to the forum and get it back up!

Aye, I tried to visit the forums last night and found the hacked version. Bastards.

I looked up RNSGroup on zone-h, and found they do have a record of going around defacing forums. They'll be lucky if you find 'em first and just punch them Doug. I'd like to do a lot more than that. I'm a bit more cynical than you perhaps; I think they know exactly what they put people through, and are a bunch of delinquents who enjoy causing other people pain to asuage their own pressing sense of insufficiency.

Thank goodness for your sensible practice of offsite backups. I hope the backup was checked to ensure it doesn't contain any backdoors or other things the group may have used to enter the last site.

Doug,

What happened to our PMs? Do you have access to them?

I had saved several with volunteer info, and hadn't yet copied/saved the info anywhere else.

So far, I have to say I'm not thrilled with this new format. I hope we can find something better.

Zone-h, had articles about a buffer overlow vulnerability that could be used for functions, and also a script insertion vulnerability that phpbb had, which I would imagine they could have taken advantage of.

Evan, I know you are upset, but please watch the name calling. Remember some people do read the forum, and have kids.

It is highly annoying, and frustrating what they did. And I too am very glad that the powers that be had the wisdom to do offsite backups.
But definitely throwing fruitloops at those hackers!
Thanks again Doug for your work in the matter!

Wow....I swear, I don't know how these hackers get the mind to attack TrueDungeon, but it happened many many times when I was hosting it. And yes, the most ways they got in was through phpBB. I'm glad we've changed. Actually I use InvisionBB now for other stuff and it is much more secure and has almost all the functionaility as before. So Doug, check out InvisionBB.

And every hack is a malicous hack, just to be clear. I agree that if I ever meet a hacker I will punch him in the face. Dregs of society...I don't understand what they accomplish besides making many people very angry.

Later

Is hacking a site like that illegal? If so, can you use the info DD found to press charges?

Too true Tom,
Wasn't as malicious I should have said.

And I don't know that anything I saw could be used as evidence.

But on that site I mentioned here is their:Attacker stats
zone-h.org/defacements/filter/filter_defacer=RNSGroup

Here's the sites mirror of what they did to our forum:
zone-h.org/defacements/mirror/id=3218002/

Although I don't know if that would at all help.

Thanks Doug!
David (S.)

I've created a page of all the avatars saved from the old forums:

truedungeon.com/trueforum/savedavatars/index.html

Quite the motley crew.

To use your avatar with this new software load the page above and save your avatar image to your machine. Then click on the 'Profile' link at the top of this page and then click on the 'Personality' link on the left list. On that page upload your avatar and then click the 'use avatar' checkbox. Sorry it wasn't automagic.