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Smashboards Downtime, Feb 1st

Warchamp7

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Hey everyone, just wanted to give an update on the recent downtime.

Early in the afternoon on Monday, February 1st, a person gained access to an admins account. From there, they accessed the admin panel and made changes to the site that resulted in the page some users ended up seeing, as well as emailing a number of users with the same content.

As soon as this intrusion was noticed, the site was brought offline for investigation. At this time, we have no indication that the server was accessed in any way or that any user data was accessed. The vandalized content was reverted to one of our backups, and the compromised admin account had it's access revoked until we can ensure the account is no longer at risk.

As a reminder, we do not ever receive or store any payment data when it comes to our Premium users, and passwords are properly stored encrypted within our database.

However, just as a general precaution we'd advise everyone to update their password and also remind everyone that you should never use the same password on multiple websites or services

Edit: Some users have expressed concern over entering their password in the plain white login box just before the site came back up with a label of "Maintenance". This was a legitimate webserver login prompt, and does not use Smashboards logins to access it which is why attempting to login to it failed. There is no need to be worried if you entered your credentials there.
 
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Opossum

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Thanks for the update, Warchamp! Glad to know everything's been handled and that no one's information was at risk.
 
D

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It's good to see that no user information has been compromised in any way. Thanks for sharing this with us, Warchamp.
 

Substitution

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Didn't another Smash website get hacked as well not too long ago? Christ what's been going on lately.
 

ArikadoSD

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do you confirm that basically no critical info could be accessed by them?

mostly worried about my paypal account lol
 

eltoroguaco

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My brain is not big enough to remember different passwords to that many sites I'm a part of. I however, use unique passwords on any sites storing payment and vital personal information. So my password for this site can do no permanent harm.

Good to know what caused this though.
 
D

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Yeah. They got hit a while ago. I'm assuming this is merely a coincide, but I am worried that this may become a pattern.
Well, I'd say it is indeed a coincidence. You've got a so-called hacking squad taking everything down and replacing it with a message containing propaganda and some unfitting music, and then there's the fact MIOM and Smashboards handled their respective situations in the same manner, with site data remaining intact. The only real difference would be the perpetrators-- I doubt this "Nigerian Cyber Army" people are affiliated with the "Moroccan Revolution Team", the team responsible for MIOM's temporary shutdown. Maybe they could be affiliated with them, but I don't really know.

As long as security is taken seriously and we take action, there shouldn't be any more attacks in the future.

Has Squidboards been checked for suspicious activity? It's our sister site.
Good question you got there. Better check if something's wrong in that site before it gets something similar to this unexpected downtime.
 
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Venus of the Desert Bloom

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I am going to create a cyber hacking team and call it the "Lebanese-Texan United Revolutionary Front Composed of Madagascan Endangered Lemur-people Backed By Swedish Socialism-influenced Bureaucracy of Disgruntled Malaysian-Chileans Born Under The Year of the Mouse
Vote4Trump".


It will make waves within the hacking community. Trust me. Waves.
 

ArikadoSD

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Well, I'd say it is indeed a coincidence. You've got a so-called hacking squad taking everything down and replacing it with a message containing propaganda and some unfitting music, and then there's the fact MIOM and Smashboards handled their respective situations in the same manner, with site data remaining intact. The only real difference would be the perpetrators-- I doubt this "Nigerian Cyber Army" people are affiliated with the "Moroccan Revolution Team", the team responsible for MIOM's temporary shutdown. Maybe they could be affiliated with them, but I don't really know.
dude, it's not a coincidence. i got proof. friend of mine managed to take a video of them hacking smashboards, miom, and various other sites.

 

FalKoopa

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So it was vandalism done just for lulz? Ugh, why.

I'll change my password, I suppose.
 

Tobi_Whatever

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I am going to create a cyber hacking team and call it the "Lebanese-Texan United Revolutionary Front Composed of Madagascan Endangered Lemur-people Backed By Swedish Socialism-influenced Bureaucracy of Disgruntled Malaysian-Chileans Born Under The Year of the Mouse
Vote4Trump".


It will make waves within the hacking community. Trust me. Waves.
What are you gonna do, let the Mexicans build a Firewall and make them pay for it?
 

mario123007

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It's good to see that no user information has been compromised in any way. Thanks for sharing this with us, Warchamp.
I was kind of shock when I heard about this, so how did the website turned wrong?
My brain is not big enough to remember different passwords to that many sites I'm a part of. I however, use unique passwords on any sites storing payment and vital personal information. So my password for this site can do no permanent harm.

Good to know what caused this though.
Me too, I use the same method as well.
 

Tobi_Whatever

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The first thing I thought when I saw the hacked website was "2006 called, they want their 1337sp33k back"
 

Tobi_Whatever

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How did they gain admin powers and how can I do it?
There are multiple possibilities, but since they seem to be script kiddies, brute force in combination with a (rather) weak password seems likely, but there are other possibilities.
It's generally not too hard to take a website down since proper protection against the typical attacks can be quite expensive.
Smashboards has nothing to be ashamed about.
I don't know how often Smashboards has to deal with this kind of attack, but they handled it pretty well.
I have seen much worse outcomes in the past on other websites, especially in regards to downtime and proper backups.
 

StarForce

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It's likely a prank that was enjoyed due to an easy way to steal a password. Trouble could be caused if wanted. The nature was not to destroy but rather annoy. Or perhaps to show someone was not properly secured in their account. For admins, senator, super mods and mods, the accounts should contain a long password which contains capital letters and numbers mixed in the bag for best results. I include super mods and mods too as a very prankful attacker could make these, scatter data and also ban users and remove posts threads and inflict penalties and warnings, remove avatar and signatures just to ruin random users, if it were the attacker's grudge. Still early action and prevention is the best and it was shown to be quick & effective.
 

Venus of the Desert Bloom

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What are you gonna do, let the Mexicans build a Firewall and make them pay for it?
I will let Smashboards build a wall paid by a combined effort from the nations of Lebanon, Madagascar, Sweden, Malaysian, Chile, and Texas but construction would be outsourced to endangered lemur-people who were born in the years of 1924,1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020, and 2032 who believe in either Socialism, Revolutionism, Unification, Bureaucracy, and Disgruntilization while they randomly shoot people in the street without give "zero ****s" because people will apparently still like them.

We are on the fringe of the new wave of cyber-hacking but we will be big. As of now, it consists of me, myself, and I as well as a splinter faction potentially composed of you, yourself, and you if you fit any of those above criteria.
 
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