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InsanelyHacked!


ColdFusion

So it appears someone with nothing better to do took it upon themselves to bring down the site for no good reason. They used an Invision PowerBoard exploit which allowed them to gain root access to the database, and after backing it up for their own gratification and future exploitation, they deleted it. I guess this is some people's idea of fun, but the simple fact is: it's a serious crime. So serious in fact, that the investigation has been passed to the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and we have been able to provide them with a number of leads thanks to some sterling work from our excellent mods!

 

We'd like to take this opportunity to appologise for the fact that your email addresses have been compromised and may be passed/sold on to third parties who may like to inform you from time to time that is indeed possible to double the size of your genitalia and perform like a god or goddess in the bedroom. This is extremely unfortunate, but we can assure you that your passwords are safely encrypted on our server so we should be free of account abuse. However, if your password is not particularly strong, we recommend you change it to something stronger ASAP. This is because commonly used passwords could be compared against a list of their encrypted versions, so passwords such "hello" are really not a wise choice. We recommend that your password be at least 8 characters long and contain a mixture of letters and numbers.

 

When we purchased InsanelyMac we wrongly assumed that it was set up securely, and since the hosting equipment was part of the purchase, we saw no immediate reason to move the hosting away from ThePlanet. Obviously this incident has forced us to look carefully at the security arrangements, and as a result we have migrated the site over to our own servers, patched the forum to the latest version and added another layer of authentication where required. We have also revised our back-up strategy so that any future incidents can be recovered from more quickly. So despite being blackmailed by those claiming to be responsible for the attack, we are pleased to announce the return of InsanelyMac, now more secure than ever.


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Glad to hear everything got restored. Although I am a little worried about my email being handed out, I can't imagine my spam count could ever increase

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Eek, yeah. Hacking the site is a real no-no, but it's good to see that you guys were able to restore the site with the nightly backup fairly quickly.

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How close are you to nailing the little twerp(s) who did this?

Ah well, I'm at least relieved this forum is back online so fast, you people must have sprouted some wings, considering you've apparently did some migrating in the process :)

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Thanx a lot :)

Cool work - on foreign hardware with not a lot of knowledge, how is all working (as i remeber, you've bought this site not so long ago).

In one word - RESPECT !!!!

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I'm going to ask the ugly question: I don't suppose this could have anything to do with the nature of this forum?

I definitely can't imagine Apple hiring crackers or whatnot, but why this forum of all out there >_>

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In the process of migrating the site we've also upgraded the hardware a little. Now the site is running on 2 machines, a web server and a dedicated database server, so I'd be interested to hear if you guys find the site any faster?

 

We've also moved it geographically from The Planet hosting in the US to our data centre in the UK.

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1.) To address Soliber's question....and I stress this is PURE speculation on my point. While Insanely was down I was going over to hackint0sh and there was a lot of discussion over there that this may have been a politically or ego based attack. It really was disturbing some of the anger in the posts over there, took me rather by surprise as Insanely for the most part has always been a very civil place.

 

2.) To address PaulMUK's comment....site does seem a little bit faster, and hopefully this will eliminate the lags I would experience sometime on the site. Now that everything is located in the UK, I am assuming at least now you no longer need to worry about the DMCA if that was ever a factor.

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When I saw all that, I was like "oh sh**". I was hoping it would all come back up and even if you had to go back 6 weeks, that would have been fine. I don't know who did it, but they should be put in jail. Was it anybody on this board?

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I am assuming at least now you no longer need to worry about the DMCA if that was ever a factor.

 

We've certainly not got any immediate plans to change the current forum rules, but I will have a look at the implication of losing the DMCA law.

 

 

When I saw all that, I was like "oh sh**". I was hoping it would all come back up and even if you had to go back 6 weeks, that would have been fine. I don't know who did it, but they should be put in jail. Was it anybody on this board?

 

Yeah I agree on the jail sentence :thumbsdown_anim: It's not clear if the hacker was a user of IMac, but it certainly seems that they are or have been involved in the OSX86 scene. Hopefully SOCA and any other foreign agencies will be able to get to the bottom of it.

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Do you guys have any idea on who did this?

 

long & short is that all we have at present is a few nicks (hotfuse, colder) and various logs. the fact that he's an asshiole goes without saying, he also has extremely poor english, and typed some cyrillic at one point, which may or may not be a double-bluff to lead suspicion towards certain russians...

 

 

BUT! as you can see speculation leads to all kinds of conclusions, and I feel the less of a witchhunt we have in this community, the better..

 

so rejoice, we're back! and lets get on with life .. that is after all, what he wanted to disrupt/destroy.

 

and leave any investigations to go on behind the scenes... :thumbsdown_anim:

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Good to see the site back up, good work guys.

 

Hmmmm, "InsanelyHacked"... lol, I coined that phrase in a forum thread on OiNK last night. Some people over there werent too happy about it being down either.

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A reason why I hate unethical hackers. This is a great website w/ tons of resource for newbies like myself. Good thing to see it back up. That/Those hacker(s) should stick a modem where the sun don't shine.

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Yay it's back! Nice and quick guys! Hopefully this {censored} won't happen again.

 

long & short is that all we have at present is a few nicks (hotfuse, colder) and various logs. the fact that he's an asshiole goes without saying, he also has extremely poor english, and typed some cyrillic at one point, which may or may not be a double-bluff to lead suspicion towards certain russians...

 

 

BUT! as you can see speculation leads to all kinds of conclusions, and I feel the less of a witchhunt we have in this community, the better..

 

so rejoice, we're back! and lets get on with life .. that is after all, what he wanted to disrupt/destroy.

 

and leave any investigations to go on behind the scenes... :thumbsdown_anim:

 

I don't know if it's because I'm a dumbass, or because I just finished reading Harry Potter, but your name keeps making me say Hagrid instead of Hagar haha.

 

I'm glad to see the site back up :whistle:

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