Ok, here is the reason we have a new forum. On Thanksgiving Day at about noon, The Pickle was attacked. Someone hacked in through the forums. They changed some things on the forum and on podcasters pages. Then they sent us an email. We were to deposit a sum of money into an online account, that they gave us. If we failed to do so within the specified period of time. They would destroy the site. They claimed to be from Russia.

Fist thing we did was shut down the site, untill we found out how they got in. They were sloppy and left a clear trail. We discovered they used a server in the UK, and came in through the forums. We contacted the FBI, but they have not called us back.

So we resecured the main website, and bought and installed a new, better, and more secure forum. We barely got it up friday evening.

Monday we will Pickleize it and try and incorporate the old posts from the old database. Boy this sucked that is all we did for almost 2 days was to fix this.

Now for the good part. We have a much better forum, and when we get it pickleized everyone will love it. I am really sorry everyone has had to put up with this temporary set back. But hopfully Monday things will be back to normal, except we will have a better forum

Gary, its crazy kind of you to come out and explain this to all of us.

We all (imho) kinda knew that something had to have happened. So sorry for the headaches, but a thousand thanks for all the work.

We are faithful and loyal and love ya for all the good things you have done for us all.

Make no apologies for improvement, even if forced by russian hackers.

We love ya (again)-


Hail Podcast Pickle~!

Jack

That suck Man well something good came out of it .
THe Pickle Rules

noice job throwin it back at'em!
so...how much did they think the pickle was worth?
now wait how do i post this edit...ah i c

They can take our Forums, but they'll never take... our Pickle!!!

Long live the Pickle, and all hail The Leland.
--Scott Fletcher
--Podcheck Review

thanx for all the work Gary and guarding the pickle from the evil doers. I feel safe now. (it explains the weird stuff last week.

daryl

I'm sorry I got so upset. It was obviously Iranian terrorists that were after me. I apologize to everyone else that got dragged into this as collateral damage. First they attacked the Israelisms Pickle page, and then the whole site. Those heartless bastards.


Carol says I have a problem in that I personalize everything. I think she's wrong and she's just trying to persecute me.






Charley

I'd be the LAST one to point fingers or cause controversy....

.......and this is totally an unrelated question and I CERTAINLY don't want it taken out of context


.....but doesn't Adam Curry live in the UK?



Does anyone have Oliver Stone's email address?



Charley

Whoops, maybe I should log in


daryl

silly man!

I thought something had to be up, because your style is to let people know ahead of time whenever there's a change, even when you don't need to.

I don't know if you remember a past post of mine, but here's a word that describes you: CLASS!

Thanks for all you do Gary.

Bill

Who needs the FBI, we have Charley!

Man, hackers suck! Glad you guys have things going again, life without the pickle would not be tolerable. Thanks for all the work you guys put in to keep this site the best that podcasting has to offer.

I will call Blair and see if he can get the SAS on it.

Oops, that was me in the last post, forgot to log in.

G'day Gary,
Hope the FBI get em how they dare attack the pickle people!

Credit to you guys getting the forum up again. looking forward to getting pickelised

-Lynne

So sorry to hear about the attack.

Don't worry, Gary. As others have said, we can rebuild it -- make it better, faster, stronger!

Long live the pickle!

Big ups to you Gary for biting the bullet, doing the right thing, and of course - letting us know what was going on.

We didn't even skip a beat because of these morons.

Power to the pickle!

All his servers are in the U.S. though.

Try OliverStone at the internet dot google dot yahoo dot net dot com. I'm pretty sure that is it.

Thanks for all of the investment (time and $$$) Gary, and co. When I saw the DARK theme this morning, I knew something foul was afoot. Keep on rockin' in the free world!

Let me chime in also and say sorry to hear about that, Gary. The Pickle Cannot Be Stopped! (And hey, I dunno about everyone else, but I took the opportunity to freshen up my signature, avatar, profile info, etc.)

-R

Wow that's crazy? Do you know if this has happened to other sites? I've never heard of something like this happening before. I like the new forums look much better anyway.

Does this mean I go back to being a Cucumber?

I was kinda proud of my Pickle Status.

me too

JESUS TAPDANCING CHRIST!! I didn't know that this sort of crap really happens!

Well, congrats P-Leaky (and friends) for getting everything up and running again in such a timely manner.

And remember, if the pickle goes down, then the terrorists win.




Danny

Man, I go away on vacation for a week and the whole world turns upside down...

Glad everything worked out for the best. The extortionist type hackers are the worst, but at least they weren't the smart extortionist type hackers.

and russian no less!

The 80's xchange board got hit a few months back and lost everything from between backups, about two weeks worth of posts. Hackers suck!

The hackers always seem to hit just after I make very profound, earthshattering, and life-altering posts, oh well, I can never remember what I wrote anyway I think I figured out the Grand Unified Theory just before the hackers hit the xchange, now all is lost. Stephen Hawking is pissed

hey you won me over as a fan when i met you at the Expo bro so i'm all for your advancement keep up the trailblazing work.

hey gary, great job getting back up and thanks...

hahaha! bendrix, i still get a kick out of that...

Welcome aboard

Once you've got the boards stable, you should scan the server (assuming you inform whatever service provider you use first) for vulnerabilities. Tools like nessus or nikto are free and can find some obvious holes. (I can help you with this, if you are interested; just email me.)

Also, be sure the server is running the latest version of PHP (if you are still running it). A new version just came out with lots of improvements and bug fixes. Same is true for any other software you are running (mysql, perl, etc.).

Greek to me...

Mrs. B (feeling dumb!) :-)

If you are not a server administrator, in the realm of information security, you need to know the following three things as a minimum:

1) Patch early and often. Use automatic updates to keep your operating system and applications up-to-date with their security fixes.
2) Run anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Also use automatic updates on this software to ensure it has the latest malware definitions.
3) Use good, strong passwords on all accounts, especially the administrator-level accounts. A good strong password is at least eight characters long containing at least one letter, one number, and one symbol.

For some more information, check out this:

http://www.cit.cornell.edu/computer/security/secure.html

This was written for Cornell folks, but the steps listed here are true for most every user and their computers.

Old posts are back now! check it out!

Great news. Thanks again for all of the hard work!!

Three Cheers!

yay! post counts too? ill know in a few seconds wont i

Nope, lol.

This is what happens when josh goes back to the US.... all hell breaks loose!

good job in keeping order, and maintaining the pickle in whatever fashion possible! This is utterly amazing that you and your crew could be up and running so quickly!

i feel your pain nacho.... i was the #2 poster.....

(at least i got to simplify my log-in name)

Well, I am relatively new and I never had a chance to participate in the first forum. But this one is very nice.
Thank you for all the great work you do.

About a year ago some radical South American "save the rainforest" group took credit for hacking MensNewsDaily (a newsblog with an attached forum) and some other sites... It took several days to a week to get all that sorted... I'd almost forgotten... WTF attacking MensNewsDaily had to do with defending rainforests still escapes me... I think it was bored adolescent mindsets doing something "because they could..."

There's some intellegence gathering going on about podcasters here...