AAO has been hacked

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Singidava
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Singidava »

By the way, how did you notice that the site had been hacked? Did you/someone else just stumble upon some of the spam links?
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Meph
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Meph »

Singidava wrote:By the way, how did you notice that the site had been hacked? Did you/someone else just stumble upon some of the spam links?
When Unas connected to the site via FTP, he noticed an additional file that had a weird filename and a Chinese title.
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Unas
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Unas »

Sheikor wrote:I don't know if you were going to warn us in French
I'll post an announcement there as well, I just took a small break for dinner :-P
KratoX wrote:But I don't think I read it, there is a possibility they attacked our Trials ?
By reaching the AAO file server, they had direct access to the trial files - but they probably don't care.
I can only think of three interesting objectives for attackers on a random forum like AAO :
  • Fill the site with spam links.
    Given that they did that only in hidden files and not in the site's visible pages, I guess it had to do with increasing the page ranks in search engine results (which take into account the number of links to a web page found on the web)
  • Fetch email/password pairs in the database : if they can then get access to mail addresses, they've got a lot of personal information to sell.
  • Get control over the server to use it in a botnet, so that they could use it to spam, launch ddos attacks (when a lot of machines - typically, computers used in a botnet - all connect to a single server to overload it and shut it down), etc.
The first, they definitely did.
The second, the may have done.
The third they haven't, as far as I can tell, and anyway they're not gonna be able to anymore.
Singidava wrote:By the way, how did you notice that the site had been hacked? Did you/someone else just stumble upon some of the spam links?
I noticed a page that I didn't remember creating in the AAO main directory, noticed it was filled with spam links, and investigated on how it got there. :wink:
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Broocevelt »

I just reported the announcement in the Spanish section, so that they're aware too of this issue.
(Of course I summarized it a lot and only gave essential information.)
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Unas
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Unas »

Okay, thanks :-)
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Wackyman »

Wow, seriously? Didn't think anyone would AAO a place of interest to hack.

Anyway, password and e-mail changed.
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Phoenix Fanatic »

Noooo! Why would anyone hack this wonderful community?! :x :(
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ThePaSch
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by ThePaSch »

Wow, seems like I'm a little bit late to the party - nonetheless, I have translated the thread for the German users now as well.

Shame on these Chinese hackers. :evil:
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Gav »

I have changed my password. :oops:
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Thursday »

Okay, this may or may not be a false alarm, but...

Yesterday, I logged onto the site to find I was logged out, and my password wouldn't work. So I reset the password from my email, thinking that I may just have logged out by accident the day before, and that I'd forgotten my password. When I logged in, I checked "log me on automatically each visit," and changed the password right after.
Today, though, the exact same thing happened. I did exactly what I did yesterday, including manually changing my password just a few minutes ago.

I don't know if this is just some glitch or something with the forums, but it's never happened to me before.
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Meph »

Ah, right. Delete all of your cookies to see if it's just that. If the password keeps getting changed, though, then it's definitely not the cookies.
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Whirlwind
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Whirlwind »

So the next question is to figure out who on the forums is from china.

I think it's lagger.
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Phoenix Fanatic »

Whirlwind wrote:So the next question is to figure out who on the forums is from china.

I think it's lagger.
Ugh Not him again... :sideglance2:
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Unas
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Unas »

Whirlwind wrote:So the next question is to figure out who on the forums is from china.
We're not here to bash all chinese people, it really wouldn't help.
The hacker is probably from outside the forums anyway - the attack is nothing specific to AAO, it's more of a generic attack.
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Whirlwind
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Re: AAO has been hacked

Post by Whirlwind »

Unas wrote:
Whirlwind wrote:So the next question is to figure out who on the forums is from china.
We're not here to bash all chinese people, it really wouldn't help.
The hacker is probably from outside the forums anyway - the attack is nothing specific to AAO, it's more of a generic attack.
I was joking when I said that, but yes. What you said.
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