Originally Posted by Admin

Allow me to clarify a few things...

We have located the criminals. An external organization is currently doing the favor of investigating the crime.

The attack was much bigger than it seems, maybe because of how quickly I managed to get the site back up (and since it occured during night/early dawn hours in the United States, where most of the traffic is from).

This was actually the first real hacking of our site. All the other times were DDoS attacks, but we have purchased DDoS protection for our server since then, so that shouldn't be that much of a problem anymore.

The attack affected the MySQL databases of the site, which basically is the core of all the information stored on the server. All threads, posts, members, news, and basically everything rely off of the interaction with the MySQL database in order to function and store information.

The hacker added an additional approx. 1,000 random values to each table in the database, in between other values, all over; a total mess. The only reason why the site is up and running at the moment is due to the fact that we also pay for hourly full site backups which go into a storage vault in our datacenter, as well as a backup dedicated server which contains an exact replica of all of the information on the site.

All these security measures have been added and payed for because, quite frankly, I'm tired of having to see a large, strong community going down, from past experience.

The method by which the hacker attacked was not a 'script kiddy', as it's called, form of attack, based on the logs, and most probably has some sort of financial backing, as most commonly attacks of this scale aren't done just because of hate.

The group of IPs we located which were inappropiately accessing the site's MySQL database without authorization were located in New York City, New York. They were neither firewalled, nor proxied, which leads me to believe that it was done through a public computer (be it a library, Internet hotspot, university, etc). The external organization that we are currently in contact with will track down and physically walk into the place where the hacking was done, and will deal with whatever evidence they find.

I would like to give a big thanks to ThePlanet for initiating such an in-depth investigation, and urging authorities to take action.

The site is currently patched of the MySQL flaw. The site could have been fixed even without the backups, but would have taken approximately 50 man hours.

Originally Posted by yoink78

Yup, don't make the same mistake as the guy who let the lady live in his basement! Take care of these morons! Why someone would want to harm this community is beyond my understanding. This community provides nothing but benefits to the PSP community, and a loss of it would be horrible. I guess if they are PSP haters or have another PSP community and are jealous of the success
or something, but I cannot understand what would drive such hatred.

Originally Posted by wilhel1812

i dont understand it, whts the point whit hacking if u dont tell who u are. they wont get anything if they dont tell who they are and what they want.

Originally Posted by Percival

It's quite stupid to tell who you are... Ever seen a bank robber call out his name when he robs a bank?

Originally Posted by Percival

It's quite stupid to tell who you are... Ever seen a bank robber call out his name when he robs a bank?

Originally Posted by wilhel1812

no, but i've seen Osama Bin Laden do it