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First, let me start by apologizing for the WGA website being down. On Friday morning (4/18/03) my personal workstation crashed. This was a bad enough way to start the day, but late afternoon that same day the WGA site crashed (unrelated to my crashed system).
I tried to recover the WGA server, but there was no readable data on the server. So it was time to restore from backups. And this is where my failure comes into play… The backups were on my workstation that had crashed earlier that same day, and I had not backed up the backups
I spent Saturday rebuilding the server, and that afternoon passed it to another WGA webmaster, jvechinski, who save my tail by having many parts of the site backed up, although somewhat older. Thankyou Jeremy!
By Sunday morning, Jeremy had passed the system back to me for final manual updating, and to put back on line. That’s when I discovered that at 9:28 Sunday morning, a hacker had gained access to the brand new server, installed a half dozen backdoors, and had installed software that would try and allow him to spy on my network.
So, the server would have to be rebuilt again. Making it somewhat easier was the fact that all of Jeremy’s files were now local to me, and I could install them. Making it somewhat harder was the fact that I had to find out how the hacker got in and prevent it from being repeated. In the year+ that the WGA site had been up, we had not suffered a breach of this nature (we had one small breach a few months back that had been cared for already). So how in less than a day had a hacker breached what was basically an identicle system?
It took me a number of hours, well into Monday to find what the hacker had used, and then how to prevent its reocurrance. The rest of Monday was spent rebuilding the server a third time, then early this morning Jeremy and I made final manual updates, and the site is now back up.
The Result:
- [*]Membership List – The membership list was only recoverable back to March 22nd, so we have lost about 45 members. Please check the Membership List and if your membership is missing, please re-register.[*]Message Boards – All messages posted after March 22nd have been lost. This includes all the Board nominees introductions and discussions.[*]WGA Store – is back to its broke state, I’ll be fixing that shortly.[*]Campout Registrations – Registrations after March 22nd are in all likilyhood missing, please check to see if you listed in the Who’s Coming list. Also, if you edited or deleted your registration after March 22nd you will need to check your entry.[*]Photo Album – Albums created or photos uploaded after March 22nd are lost.[/list]
Please post under this thread any other issues you might discover, and I will try and correct them as quickly as possible.
Again, I’m sorry for the loss of data. I am now backing up the backups, and periodically cloning the entire server.
-Alan
Sorry to hear of the frustration. I know the feeling, I’ve been there.
Hackers are the main reason why I use FreeBSD for any of my servers It’s not made out of swiss cheese, and I love how it logs EVERYTHING that happens.
Glad to hear that things are wrapping up. Hopefully the script kiddie grows up or finds another server to poke at.
Nick
of The CacheseekersI’m sure I speak for a lot of WGA members when I say a big “thanks” to Alan of CacheCows and JeremyV for their work to get the site back up again. We appreciate your efforts!
THANKS THANKS THANKS FOR ALL YOUR TIME GETTING THIS BACK UP. I THINK THIS COUNTS FOR AT LEAST 1 DRINK FROM MY TO YOU AT THE CAMPOUT!!!!!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
Thanks a lot guys for all the hard work!
My hand finally stopped shaking and the nervious twitch seems to have gone away
[This message has been edited by GrouseTales (edited 04-29-2003).]
Still working out a few aftershocks, its back
WTG Guys!! I don’t feel quite as lost anymore….
Thanks from
Team FlushingrouseThanks for all your hard work, It is greatly apprieciated. I looked at the COTM page and nothing is there. Because it is so close to the end of the month, are you going to extend the deadline for monthly voting? Again thanks for getting the site back up. Mark
Oh that explains why I wasn’t seeing the link to WGA in my cache pages. Thanks for working so hard to get the site up again. If you catch the hacker let me know. I’ll take the jerk to the most mosquito infested swampland I know at Fox Brook Park and tie him to a tree or something for a few hours!
Thanks A million for all of your hard work!!! We really do appreciate it more than you know!!! It is great for the WGA to be back online!!!
Thanks again-
WISearchers-
Rhonda & TonyWow! Thank you guys for all the hard work!! Missed checking on what’s going on..
~The Lil Otter
The WGA store is back online!
Thanks for all the hard work guys. Sounds like you guys know what you are doing with this computer stuff. I’m lucky I know how to turn it on. Thanks again.
I’m glad it came up when it did. I think the beast was going thru WGA Withdrawal…
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