Yes, we were hacked

[Mycal]

In case you are completely unaware, our site was in fact hacked. If you haven't checked the main page of the website in the past few days, I made a post there stating the fact as well as cleaned it up a bit.

Honestly, I am not completely positive how they got in. I do know that if they do it again, our host has agreed to hand over the logs of our account in order to properly prosecute the perpetrator.

When the site was receiving forbidden messages, that was a result of the hacker. He tried to execute a command that was not allowed within our hosts guidelines and our host automatically blocked our site from doing anything at all. After contacting the host, they gave a few suggestions to prevent it from happening again and reactivated the site.

I deleted the obvious vulnerabilities and fixed the main site, but didn't notice that the forum was overwritten as well until yesterday. I have uploaded an edited copy (to get rid of all scripts and embedded music) of the page the hacker replaced our page with to here:
http://www.burningstormstudios.com/hackerbitch.php

 

[Fledge]

I have a few questions. Some trivial curiosities, some not.

What does SaFaH AL MyZaYeEn mean? I suspect that it is the name of one of the supposedly Algerian Muslim hackers?

Does this have anything to do with the forum skin that got buggy a month or so before the hacking?

Why are the forum skin(s) and emoticons not displaying at the moment?

 

[Mycal]

I was wondering if that was just me or not. I'm going to fully reupload the forum files and see if that fixes it.

So if the server is not responding or you get errors for the next few hours thats what is going on.

 

[Mycal]

OK, everything is all fixed now I think. Did the new forum skin always have the font colors off to the right side? I don't remember.

I have turned off the override again for the forum skins. You can use whatever skin you want, but the default will be the new skin.

 

[Fledge]

Currently, I can only see one of the three skins: prosilver.
Also, the smilies are still gone.
I am sharing this information not to nag or complain, but to inform. (However, that might be unnecessary.)

 

[Mycal]

OK, for whatever reason, after the hack, the forum no longer likes our subdomain.

So until I know whats wrong, simply update your bookmarks to point to this location:
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.burningstormstudios.com/forum/">http://www.burningstormstudios.com/forum/</a>
instead of:
http://forum.burningstormstudios.com/

 

[Mycal]

OK, for those who are having troubles logging into the forums please follow this guide:

1. First make sure you are at http://www.burningstormstudios.com/forum/ and NOT [st]http://forum.burningstormstudios.com[/st]
2. Next clear your cookies for this website only
2.5. If you do not know how to do this, I have created a script to do this for you click this link http://www.burningstormstudios.com/foru ... ookies.php
3. Attempt to login again

If you have any problems logging in after doing the above, please e-mail me and I will do my best to help you.

 

[Mycal]

This post is to officially state that the forum subdomain does now work properly again.

I will be sending a mass e-mail to all members shortly with links to this topic and the basic gist of all the events the past few weeks.

 

[Mycal]

There has still been no posts since everything was fixed. So I have no idea one way or another whether people are still having troubles with logins.

So I have enabled guest access on the announcement forum. Please reply to this topic with your username if you are still having problems logging in. And if you happened to have received the mass e-mail sent from the forum, please also post about that, I am thinking the mail system on the forum is broken too.

 

[Fledge]

I can post at the moment.

 

[DJPieSlice]

I have a few questions. Some trivial curiosities, some not.

What does SaFaH AL MyZaYeEn mean? I suspect that it is the name of one of the supposedly Algerian Muslim hackers?

Does this have anything to do with the forum skin that got buggy a month or so before the hacking?

Why are the forum skin(s) and emoticons not displaying at the moment?

I find that somewhat offensive, as I am a Muslim.

Anyways, I am an Egyptian Canadian, and though my Arabic is very weak, I can tell you that
Safah means 'Pages' and Al Myzayeen either means 'The Gifted' or 'The Balance'.

Nevertheless, it's just another asshole proving the world's impression about us.

But don't take it as if they had something personal against your site, actually. You were just very un-lucky. Beginner hackers choose any random unprotected website to play their tricks on, for practice.

And no, he cannot be algerian. I suspect he is Saudi, because you'd be surprised at the popularity of hacking there.