Yesterday, CS-Nation was hacked. This is the second time NewsPro was "attacked" by someone (the first time, someone actually knew the password). Just like any authorization system, a good username and good password will let you in. This user, let's call him SHAMROCK, used a brute force program to guess cliffe's password (which was most likely a series of numbers or just plain 'cliffe'). Using correct terms, he didn't hack us, nor did he even crack us. He did something any one in the world could do, but congrats to him for beating the security system.
Then SHAMROCK registered for the comments and was actually bright enough to post a comment. Well the server logs had his IP, the comments logs had his IP and username. His username had a real e-mail address. His e-mail address, with GameSpy, had a real phone number. You can imagine Ryan Sylvester's surprise when our lovable UNIX admin gave him a ring!
The intent here isn't to laugh at SHAMROCK's stupidity, we were the ones who got h@x3d in the first place, but rather to alert everyone that everything is okay here. Thankfully, cliffe didn't actually quit CS and CS: CZ is still being worked on. Our security isn't in question, this is a one time thing that can happen to anyone. We're big enough of a target that someone actually got to us and made some fake posts. It almost makes me weep.
Thanks to stem and cliffe for helping out, though figuring this out didn't take more than 10 minutes.
Update: cliffe's password was indeed cliffe, so it didn't take a genius. I won't blame cliffe, because I set it up that way! Arr!
Then SHAMROCK registered for the comments and was actually bright enough to post a comment. Well the server logs had his IP, the comments logs had his IP and username. His username had a real e-mail address. His e-mail address, with GameSpy, had a real phone number. You can imagine Ryan Sylvester's surprise when our lovable UNIX admin gave him a ring!
The intent here isn't to laugh at SHAMROCK's stupidity, we were the ones who got h@x3d in the first place, but rather to alert everyone that everything is okay here. Thankfully, cliffe didn't actually quit CS and CS: CZ is still being worked on. Our security isn't in question, this is a one time thing that can happen to anyone. We're big enough of a target that someone actually got to us and made some fake posts. It almost makes me weep.
Thanks to stem and cliffe for helping out, though figuring this out didn't take more than 10 minutes.
Update: cliffe's password was indeed cliffe, so it didn't take a genius. I won't blame cliffe, because I set it up that way! Arr!