What's Been Going On

Posted By: Ed Tuesday, April 2, 2002 12:19:31 PM

Starting last night, a hacker was able to access the PIC database server at our web hosting company and corrupt several of the databases. This meant they had to be restored from backups. Unfortunately, all comments to articles and postings to the Forums since Saturday night have been lost. This is really too bad as the people mostly being hurt by these attacks are the people posting the comments. The actual articles are easy to restore but the comments are stored only in the databases

Long time readers might remember that this is the second time PIC has been hacked. The other person to do so was carrying out a pro-Napster campaign and has since been tracked down by federal authorities and arrested.

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This looks familiar!

I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 5:47:18 PM #
Just kiddin! :)

I missed the lack of updates today! I need to get my fill!!


RE: This looks familiar!
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 6:14:32 PM #
It's like were in a time warp! First yesterday's comments are dissappearing, then, later, the articles themselves.

Hide while you still can!

RE: This looks familiar!
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 6:18:22 PM #
actually, it looks more like they got hacked or somethin . . .

RE: This looks familiar!
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 6:32:54 PM #
yes, they got hacked again today...that's twice, we really got a punk bastard trying to fool around...should be shot...

RE: This looks familiar!
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 6:47:18 PM #
Poor Ed.

RE: This looks familiar!
cykalan @ 4/3/2002 11:45:46 AM #
being cracked again?
I just experienced another 10 mins of 500 Error....

....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...

LC @ 4/2/2002 8:40:26 PM #
jeez.. my day seemed a lot longer without any news... hope things get back to normal soon...

Was the hacking destructive, a prank, a general server attack, a de-facing ????? anyone have any info?


RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...
ImpReza @ 4/2/2002 9:05:29 PM #
in the forums, there is credible evidence to beleive that this was a direct attack on Palm InfoCenter itself, and not just a general server attack.

THE STORY OF WHAT HAPPENED, AS I SAW IT...
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 10:02:35 PM #
The site came online today for a brief period of time, Ed explained the situation in an article. Yesterday a hacker hacked into the hosting company and attacked Palminfocenter... All the previous user posts are now lost, since they were housed on the host servers. The site itself is on hard drive, so they still have the articles and everything else, but the posts are lost. When the site came back online today, Ed even posted some updates about Palm and CopyTalk and he explained what the hacker did, but soon afterwards, I think less that half an hour, the hacker striked again and it seemed like he had full control over the site. He erased everything again accept for Ed's post called " Hackers Alive and Well"(which was Ed's explination of the hacking event). The hacker probably left this post because he must have found it amusing in some twisted way. Since the hacker left this post, I quickly posted a reply to the post with smething to the effect of " Hey Hacker, you're a F-U-C-K Face." I suspect that the hacker read this post and took offence, because about five minutes later my offensive post and whatever was left of Ed's post were deleted... The site was left blank except for the menu bar, then I guess the hacker left or Ed re-took control of the site... In sum, this site was hacked twice, once yesterday and again today, right after Ed put the site back online.

My username is Crustyedgeofinovation, but i can't remember my password, or maybe it's gone, I hope the site is back soon, and the little F-U-C-K FACE Hacker get's a life...

RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...
crustyedgeofinnovation @ 4/2/2002 10:09:04 PM #
There, now i found my password, good...

RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breath
Kesh @ 4/2/2002 11:13:39 PM #
It was probablys someone ticked off over the Copyright Law article flamefest. ;)

RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/2/2002 11:15:53 PM #
Oh My. I thought that the whole thing was an April Fool's joke.

Friggin M$ and their crappy security
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 12:11:14 AM #
The hacker probably was exploiting some security hole in IIS (PIC uses asp, so I assume it is running on IIS). Ed you need to move the site over to jsp, then this sort of thing is less likely to happen.

RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...
ImpReza @ 4/3/2002 12:22:04 AM #
Here is the picture from the forums that Davy Fields got.
http://davyfields.com/Picture1.jpg

RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 2:15:32 PM #
Nice browser. :)

RE: ....cant breathe.... need my infocenter.... can't breathe...
MacPrince @ 4/3/2002 5:57:07 PM #
> The hacker probably was exploiting some security hole in IIS (PIC uses asp, so I assume it is running on IIS). Ed you need to move the site over to jsp, then this sort of thing is less likely to happen.

He is running IIS...NetCraft.com confirms it. Ed, HandEra got cracked a few months ago because they were (and still are, unfortunately) running IIS. Please consider Apache on Linux or BSD!

>Nice browser. :)

I agree...but not OmniWeb? :-)
http://www.omnigroup.com/

Lonely looser outcast = hacker without a cause

tipds @ 4/3/2002 12:44:04 PM #
I read a bumper sticker that, I think, says it best:

"Mean people suck"

Tip DS

RE: Lonely looser outcast = hacker without a cause
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 3:05:40 PM #
Mean people rule, but hackers suck.

Hacker is not the same as Cracker

I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 3:32:20 PM #
Please, oh please stick with the hight level of knowledge you've shown the world to have. What you have said is a Cracker not a Hacker. If you don't know the difference between the two, don't use the words.


RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 4:35:10 PM #
Go easy on Ed, okay...

By the way, He is right. "Hacker" refers to experts who modify software behind the scene to benefit himself in a good way. i.e. "Hack" in our PalmOS is a Hacker's hack. On the other hand, "cracker" refers to experts who modify software behind the scene to benefit himself in bad ways, such as destroying other people's computer, denying access to others, stealing credit card numbers, etc.

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 4:55:40 PM #
According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, a hacker is "One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file."

Down South where I live, a "cracker" is a redneck living out in the woods and eating a lot of squirrel.

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
rldunn @ 4/3/2002 5:14:31 PM #
> Down South where I live, a "cracker" is a redneck living out in the woods and eating a lot of squirrel.

I've always wondered what those people should be called. As a Northerner, I've always just said called them 'people living in the woods eating lots of squirrel', but next time, I can just summarize them as 'crackers'!! Thanks for the tip!! :)

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 6:08:13 PM #
you folk shuldnt be maken fun of us crackers down here. have you ever aten squirel? its pretty dam good.

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 6:50:09 PM #
15,000,000 people and 10 last names....

A family tree that has no branches

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/3/2002 7:39:33 PM #
heh, intresting . . .

i always thought hacking dealt with messing with people's sites and such and cracking was modifying software to remove limits

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/4/2002 1:37:20 AM #
> According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, a hacker is "One who uses programming skills to gain illegal access to a computer network or file."

Shouldn't you use a more appropreiate dictionary? Such as a computer-literated dictionary? Yeah, according to The American Heritage Dictionary, "Windows" has nothing to do with Microsoft and and "Palm" is the palm of your hand. Good try, but not a good resource.

RE: Hacker is not the same as Cracker
I.M. Anonymous @ 4/5/2002 12:41:18 AM #
The correct definition for Hacker and Cracker in the computer arena can be found on MIT's famous technical dictionary for wich I don't have a URL handy, but Google-it if you wanna know.

And yes, the story should have used Cracker instead of Hacker. Now I'm goinna get me some sqrl!

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