Site hacked by Turkish Hackers

As most of you will know, the site was hacked last sunday by some turkish hackers. The site is back to normal though but ill be double checking as much as i can in the next week to see if there is anything i have missed. These guys have targeted hundreds of forums on the web

it seems that what they did was exploit a hole in our chat room and use it to put their hacker information on our home page. I have now removed the chat script and wont be using it in the future. However, they had uploaded some malicious scripts. (they did this to hundreds/thousands of forums)

The site was down longer than i hoped because i was in the usa for the weekend when it all happened. I got home Tuesday morning at 10am and went straight to bed - when i got up i then found out (via doug from cakepoker on messsenger) that there were problems with the site.

Thanks to everyone who contacted me about this and gave me info about the whole thing. In particular cowboy who did some research on it and send me a rundown of what had happened - you saved me a lot of time bud in trying to fix this at the start

Sorry for the inconvenience - i always take site security very seriously but i hadnt thought that i would have had any problems with the chat script (plus the timing of me being away was also unlucky).


Why did it take so long to get back online?
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As if the hacking problem wasnt enough the hosting company were not on the ball as much as they usually are. This prolonged the recovery from 2 days to more like 4.

The hosting company just refuse to talk to other internal departments. I emailed dedicated server support. They were looking into it. They told me to fix it they had to reload the operating system on the server as the hackers caused a boot error. Fine i said, go ahead. Their reply : Can you please request this from the os department....yawn....surely they can request this themselves.

When i was submitting the form to the os reload department i noticed a part which says 'Do you agree that all of your data could be lost in the reload'. Hell no i said. My site was being backed up daily so i went back to dedicated support and told them that. They said they couldn't check if it was being backed up because the server was down.

I referred them to several previous support tickets from me requesting daily back ups and two support tickets from the hosting company comfirming it was done and politely told them that i would not be happy if back ups were not being done every day.

I then had to go through the sales department...which isnt that bad you may think....until you realise they only work 9-5 and are based in australia. So i had to wait another 7 or 8 hours until they could look into it.

Eventually the os was reloaded and they told me that i could now transfer the files from the old hard drive to the new one. Once again i contacted dedicated support about this (because there is a rule they arent allowed to contact each other and just get it done!!!). They then told me that Sales had to mount the hard drive....and you know what that means....waiting til 1am UK time for the sales team to arrive at their desk. Great!

A day later they had mounted the drive and were in the process of transferring the files. I had queried why there was so many problems and asked how they couldnt just restore the sites from one of the daily back ups - It was then that i got an email from the sales team saying that no back drive was in the server....which explains why the dedicated support team in my previous correspondence were very vague when i brought the whole thing up


Moving On
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This whole week has been a bit of a nightmare. I truly believed a few days ago that everything - THF and all my other sites, were lost. I back up THF once a month (hadnt did it since 9th August) but some of my other sites hadnt been backed up in a long time. I kinda got lazy because i was told everything was being backed up....which as i mentioned above, wasnt.

Not only that...other than emailing the hosting company. I couldnt actually do anything with my sites so i was left sitting doing nothing. I didnt want to go out away from the pc much either though because they were emailing me back sporadically every few hours and i wanted to be able to answer any questions they had.

I do take the security of the site very seriously however this was something i really didnt see coming and these groups stunned a lot of webmasters with their tactics - you have to remember even some of the biggest websites on the web have been hacked. As well as my own personal back ups, back ups from the hosting company etc...i will be looking into an external company doing back ups on a regular basis so that in the offchance something as bad as this happened again, the site would not be lost. You sometimes cant put a price on peace of mind!


Again, i apologise for the site being down for so many days and i really appreciate the help and support from members during all this. Onwards and upwards!

Kev

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thank god we're back up. thanks for all the work and time you must have put in fonz to get the site rolling again. i'm home ridden last week and this upcoming week due to some health related issues and i was going insane sitting here without the forum. i know you're very busy fonz but one thing missing here at my end is the part at the bottom of the home page that shows the latest posts and the poster leaders section. whenever you find time.

thanks again
the rat

thanks rat

i know about the latest posts thing on the home page. Many webmasters have said that the stats add on had a security hole which was also cause for a lot of people being hacked. Ive updated it to the supposedly safe version but im stilll looking at all the discussions about it before i add it back on

most likely, ill add it back in the next few hours after ive looked into it a little

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wow....hackers brought the site down by exploiting a hole in the chat program. I am surprised it was so widespread. thanks for update Fonz and all the time and effort put into getting the best poker forum up and running again.

JR

What a bummer thing to have to come back to after a holiday. Cudos to you sir for working around the clock to get things back to normal. Its funny how much these past few days affected alot of people. I saw posts in the monthly trivia chat box, during THf games, even non THF games at various sites members were showing up just to ask what the latest word was, I was getting emails and Instant messages from members concerned about the site, etc........ People missed it. It was part of their daily routine. I know I did. Glad its back and part of my day again............

good to see it back again :-)

Thanks for all the hard work getting the site back up. I know that wedgie and I both missed it as well as a lot of others.

Again thanks,

DUDLEY

Sorry we trashed the site while you were gone. I told Sonny not to hit that button, but you know how that goes. LOL

Seriously though...

Thanks for everything Fonz. I know you spent a lot time and effort to get things back up and running for us.

I joked while playing at Cake the other day that I was going through THF withdraws.

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