8mm Forum: Hackers

This is topic Hackers in forum General Yak at 8mm Forum.

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Posted by Mike Peckham (Member # 16) on June 23, 2006, 05:02 AM:

I guess this is a question for Brad; As many people will already know, the 8mm film shooting forum is currently "down" and apparently due to the actions of a hacker.

Whilst there is lots that could be said about the hacker(s), I was wondering how secure this site is, and if it were to "go down", would all the previous postings be lost, as happened once before?

This is all very worrying because the "archives" contain so much interesting information about our hobby and it would be tragic if it were lost... [Confused]

Also, is there a list of members and their contact details saved somewhere so that if the worst happened we could all be contacted if and when the site came back on line?

Mike [Frown]

Posted by Kevin Faulkner (Member # 6) on June 23, 2006, 06:28 AM:

Mike, From a converstaion with Brad some while ago I think the site is backed up regularly just incase of this type of problem or even a hardware failure.

Kev.

Posted by Douglas Meltzer (Member # 28) on June 23, 2006, 11:49 AM:

We even have a special system just to back up all of Jan's postings.

Doug

Posted by Jean-Marc Toussaint (Member # 270) on June 23, 2006, 12:38 PM:

Yeah, it's called the JamJan... [Big Grin]

Posted by Kevin Faulkner (Member # 6) on June 23, 2006, 03:46 PM:

A server all to himself. lol [Big Grin]

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 23, 2006, 05:52 PM:

Oh, pffffffttt.

[Big Grin]

Posted by John Cook (Member # 203) on June 23, 2006, 08:46 PM:

I've never seen such a motly bunch! Jan are they picking on you again? [Cool]

Whoever hacked Andreas site sure did the job well....that stinks...and before you ask no it wasn't me!

Posted by Mike Peckham (Member # 16) on June 24, 2006, 06:02 AM:

Jan, it was never my intention... [Roll Eyes]

Mike

Posted by Kevin Faulkner (Member # 6) on June 24, 2006, 07:05 AM:

The one good thing, as I have said many times before, is that the members on this forum do have a good sense of humour....mind you they need it [Big Grin]

I dont think that a forum should be deadly serious all the time and it's good to have a bit of a laugh....just hope Jan doesn't get too upset [Wink]

Kev

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 24, 2006, 01:39 PM:

Nahhhh, never. *secretly scheming every involved member's downfall* [Wink]

John, are those pictures of you? They're great. [Smile]

Posted by John Cook (Member # 203) on June 25, 2006, 12:12 AM:

Yes, tis I, why would I post a picture of someone so butt ugly if it wasn't me?

Today I spent the afternoon watching the Indy cars at the 3/4 mile Richmond International Raceway. A lot of fun!

The filmshooting forum still isn't up, bummer. [Frown]

Posted by Knut Nordahl (Member # 518) on June 25, 2006, 05:22 AM:

quote:
the 8mm film shooting forum is currently "down" and apparently due to the actions of a hacker.

Do we know this for shure?

Andreas other site, his norwegian business site, states that they have technical difficulties, and at one time there was a disclamer on the www.filmhooting.com saying something like that he had some problems with an upgrade, and was investigating. The disclaimer is gone now.

I hope he'll be able to fix it!

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 25, 2006, 08:35 AM:

Well, that is the common belief - what happened at first was that when trying to visit the forum, a popup window would come up showing a message along the lines of "Sorry, forum has been hacked, will be back up later today" and ask for a username and password (probably a quick fix to prevent unauthorized access to the server while the forum was being repaired). A day or two later that disappeared, and now the browser will just get stuck at "Connecting to..." but never get a server reply. So something is going on but as to how much longer it's gonna take, who can say? I do hope the place is back up soon...

Posted by Knut Nordahl (Member # 518) on June 27, 2006, 03:21 AM:

That seems to be true.

Looks like the site is comming alive again now! YAY!!

Posted by Mike Peckham (Member # 16) on June 27, 2006, 03:32 AM:

Hello Guys

As Knut says, it looks as though the film shooting forumn is coming back to life again. Here is Andreas update of the problem so far;

quote:
The filmshooting site has had some major troubles since thursday June 22nd. The problems are software and hardware related. I've been working hard trying to fix all problems ever since they occured and unfortunatly it will take some more time untill we have all up and running again. I hope to have the base site up again today (June 27th.), but the database and forum will be down for a few more days I think.
Some details about what has happened: First we had a deface/hacker ruining much of the forum. I closed down the forum to upgrade it aswell as upgrading the systems on the server. These upgrades failed bigtime and the machine wouldn't restart this saturday. Since the server is located in Oslo (about 5 hours away from me) I had to wait until monday to get someone who works there to get it back up again. The problem was a failing disk. Since then upgrades have been troublesome and first now things are starting to work a little again.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I can assure you I work very hard to get everything up and running again as soon as possible. I have now skipped work for 4 days because of this so I will have a busy week resuming normal operations and be finished with my daytime workload before summer holidays begin.

Best regards,
Andreas Wideroe Andersen
Filmshooting | Com Administrator

I'm sure we all wish him well with getting it back on line, his forum is a great resource for small format film makers, it'd be a terrible shame to see it disapear altogether.

Mike [Cool]

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 27, 2006, 07:34 PM:

Mike, how did you get this information from Andreas? I was wondering whether he would try to let the members of his forum know via other means (other forums, for example, or a chain email).

It's good to hear that he's making progress at last, though... sounds like a case of bad luck, getting hacked AND experiencing hardware failures [Frown]

but I'm sure many people will appreciate the work he's putting into this (and the fact he's taking time away from his job as well). I know I do. [Smile]

Posted by John Cook (Member # 203) on June 27, 2006, 09:59 PM:

Jan

Not to take anything away from Mikes post above what Mike posted is on Andreas website (it was probably up and running not more than two minutes after you last checked for signs of life [Big Grin]

.) Some time over the last 12 hours he was able to at least get the main board link back up. Anything that requires access to the database is still down. I'm glad to see that he's making progress, but unfortunately he's probably loosing sleep doing it.

John

Posted by John Cook (Member # 203) on June 28, 2006, 06:40 PM:

filmshooting is back up!

[Big Grin]

Posted by Jan Bister (Member # 332) on June 28, 2006, 09:25 PM:

I noticed. Yay! [Smile]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on July 01, 2006, 11:32 AM:

Downtime due to hackers is a common blame that webmasters use when their sites go down, when in reality there are many reasons why it could go down or data lost. There isn't any real way to know for sure about the other site. I can assure you that this site is backed up regularly on 3 machines in different parts of the country...so it would take a heck of a coincidence to lose the site if the server crashed to an unrecoverable state. About the worst that would happen would be the site is down for a few days to a week and some of the most recent posts would be lost.

I also believe in preserving the archives, as much useful information can be found there. That is why I have never purged older posts to clear room on any forum I run. I simply add more hard drive space to the servers when the time comes.

Posted by Douglas Meltzer (Member # 28) on July 01, 2006, 01:42 PM:

Brad,

That's great to hear, very reassuring. Thanks!

Doug

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