Site Hacked - again 2011-05-12

[Kym]

In summary... (deja vu)

1. Were back !!

2. I restored to the backup at 3.20am AEST today

3. Many sites have been hacked, it was due to a 3rd party add-on that is very common. The add-on has been fixed.


Edit:
You need to re-vote and/or re-enter competitions, also re-post anything from this morning.

Technical: It was an SQL injection attack (bug in the add-on product) that created a new Admin user, and went downhill from there.

[ameerat42]

AP Team. Just wondering whether today's outage was as bad as the stupid video I got indicated???
Am.

[ving]

go team!

[Mary Anne]

Great and

[mercho]

Good to see it back up so quick!

[BecM]

I know some good Navy Seals that can sort the bas%$#ds out

[JimD]

I wondered what happened.

[geoffsta]

I hope they didn't hack the site to gain info about members, like email addresses and stuff.
Must have been the Hole family. Kayke Hole, Bung Hole, and Brother R. Sole.

[Kym]

I hope they didn't hack the site to gain info about members, like email addresses and stuff.
Must have been the Hole family. Kayke Hole, Bung Hole, and Brother R. Sole.

Yes, they may have, but we don't seem to have evidence that they did.

Emails are the only thing of value.
Passwords are one-way hashed so they can't get those.
We don't store anything other that what you see in your profile.
The shop does not store CC details.

[arnica]

I kept on refreshing ... wanting the site to be back up ....

[agb]

Is there any chance the users may have downloaded anything after viewing something on the site? I know I am possibly showing my ignorance of such matters, but I can cope with that. I hope.

[Analog6]

Oxygen thieves. Thanks to all concerned for your great and speedy work restoring us.

[PH005]

Well done Kym, and all concerned. By coincidence the Westpac online site was down at the same time.

[dtoh]

phew, that swedish song was on par with being rick rolled!

[Kym]

AP Team. Just wondering whether today's outage was as bad as the stupid video I got indicated???
Am.

phew, that swedish song was on par with being rick rolled!

Yup the video was the goal of the exercise.

From what is reported by other sites it was not very damaging. I did a full recovery, as it was the safest option.
Some user accounts had passwords changes, account titles changed to "hacked by xxx", and the annoying video replacing several index files.
Also all Admins were banned and a new false Admin account created. Rick, Cheryl and I have a backdoor key so that is pointless.
I have changed key internal passwords.

[Chilli]

and I thought i'd been banned....

[ricktas]

NOTE : all posts, threads, competition entries and votes placed this morning before the hack will no longer exist. Everything posted to AP between about 3.20am and the hack time, is gone. We have restored the site from the backup that happens around 3.20am (AEST) each day.

Please feel free to re-post your threads and comments, re-enter your competition entries and vote again. This only affects those posts, threads, votes and entries since around 3.20am today. Anything done before that time has been restored.

[Ian Brewster]

Hi Kym,

Your quick efforts much appreciated.

With the competitions that closed yesterday 5th May, the Qualifying Vote is showing in orange. If I go to re-vote, I am advised that my vote has been recorded - thats fine. I presume some later date will now apply before this vote can move to the Final Vote status. Could we be advised what is planned/happening on these comps?

Ian

[ricktas]

Hi Kym,

Your quick efforts much appreciated.

With the competitions that closed yesterday 5th May, the Qualifying Vote is showing in orange. If I go to re-vote, I am advised that my vote has been recorded - thats fine. I presume some later date will now apply before this vote can move to the Final Vote status. Could we be advised what is planned/happening on these comps?

Ian

That is now fixed. With all that transpired yesterday, I wanted to make sure the site was stable and everything was fine before I moved the polls to final voting. By leaving them, it also allowed those that had voted and lost their votes, to re-vote. Final Polls are now up and running

[Ms Monny]

Sorry Kym for inboxing you on this without actually reading what had happened. I thought I was going senile. Have to say sorry to someone else for accusing them of deleting their image and then re-posting the edited version.