Going back a few years but what happened in the end?

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-year-was-the-great-hack

Are we allowed to talk about it then? Pretty sure I got banned for mentioning it once.

grum… what? No you didn’t. Why on earth would we?

The answer is absolutely nothing happened.

West Yorkshire police said it was not in the public interest to pursue a prosecution, despite the fact we not only had a confession but the name and address of the hacker who did it. This also despite the fact the same hacker admitted to previously breaking in to and stealing an NHS database containing patient info.

Also, our own business interruption insurance refused to payout on the grounds, ‘there was no physical signs of entry to the building.’ No really!

If anything good came out of it it was that the hacking group concerned agreed to an amnesty and to leave us alone since they found themselves on the pointy end of the wrath of not only our own in house hacking skills but also that of many members of the forum who successfully engaged in an effective DNS attack on their website.

Oh, and the bit where the hacker rang me up from a phone box to tell me that if we tried to trace him that he’d just ping us around the world forever and we’d never catch him. To which my response was, ‘Well, Scott, I think we already know who you are and where you live and what school in Norwich you go to’.

The brief silence before he hung up warms me to this day, although I’d still rather the police had taken it seriously. They even told us that it wasn’t their problem since our servers at the time were located in Atlanta – Their advice was to contact the FBI!

So, bitter/sweet memories although to be pragmatic about it that was the moment we rebuilt and changed things and was probably the catalyst for our development and experiments with digital publishing, so I don’t lose sleep over it any more 🙂

Phoning the FBI would be kewl.

West Yorkshire police said it was not in the public interest to pursue a prosecution, despite the fact we not only had a confession but the name and address of the hacker who did it. This also despite the fact the same hacker admitted to previously breaking in to and stealing an NHS database containing patient info.

Computer crime is a ballache to local plod.

on the pointy end of the wrath of not only our own in house hacking skills

Can this elite band of white knights code up some avatars and pm functions? 8)

When they have finished roller skating, of course.

Now that was interesting, Mark!
I suspect the cops would view ‘cyber crime’ (© The Sun) rather differently these days. I guess it was too new a phenomenon for them to realise the true impact.

Thank you Mark.

“not in the public interest”. Nice. **** ‘ers.

Avatars you say.

No thanks not on the forum anyway I like the clean look, avatars and sigs are for 1337 gaming clan forums.

If only they allowed gifs, though, Drac 🙁

…although I wasn’t being deadly serious.

PM functions on the other hand…

Cheers,

Danny B.

grum… what? No you didn’t. Why on earth would we?

Just found the email. Apparently I posted a link to the hackers forum pointing out it was back online again – got banned for 27 years!

Oh, and the bit where the hacker rang me up from a phone box to tell me that if we tried to trace him that he’d just ping us around the world forever and we’d never catch him. To which my response was, ‘Well, Scott, I think we already know who you are and where you live and what school in Norwich you go to’.

🙂

LOOOOOOOOL

One for Jamie…

Nice one jamie-proper liquid/screen interface there! 😆

So a crime was committed, confessed to and the police didnt do anything – is that not a crime then. I’d report it.

I only had to pay Scott a few quid and a triangle of Dairylea too.

I still have the zip file with everyone’s passwords in it somewhere – must look it out sometime and see if any of them are still valid… 😉

Well, Scott

Jack, as I seem to recall. Jack W.

http://www.prlog.org/11375628-the-ones-to-watch.html
http://oneagency.co/2013/07/16/prism-and-your-privacy/

You’re not forgotten Jack 😉

I’m glad Jamie’s back 😀

Oh, and the bit where the hacker rang me up from a phone box to tell me that if we tried to trace him that he’d just ping us around the world forever and we’d never catch him. To which my response was, ‘Well, Scott, I think we already know who you are and where you live and what school in Norwich you go to’.

Sweet! Oh, to have been able to see his face when he heard that!

…and this is what it used to look like, courtesy of The Wayback Machine: STW forum cache, 2007

Why is crikey still here?!

Can this elite band of white knights code up some avatars

Can, won’t. 🙂
PM is being coded up.

/reverse psychology

I bet you can’t!*

*Please don’t.

sadly that seems to be the standard response from police whenever ive had to deal with them

eg
mobile stolen on the bus
when my camera was stolen and i found it on ebay
and when my credit cards were swiped

no wonder crime stats are going down, yet the perception of crime is going up

back OT – post hack the forums a lot slicker so all turned out nice in the end

What was hacked, the whole of the STW office or the forum or?

Was anything valuable lost?

How did they perform the attack, and how did you retaliate?

Very interested!

What was hacked, the whole of the STW office or the forum or?

Forum.

Was anything valuable lost?

Valuable arguing on the internet time over the Xmas period.

How did they perform the attack…

Squirrel Injection.

…and how did you retaliate?

Killed dem squirrels by breaking out da honey badgers.

Very interested!

It was quite mundane. Unless it was like that scene in that really bad film Swordfish, where the guy has to hack while getting a [NOPE-MODS!]

I suspect people would describe such a thing as a database compromise. I’ll spare you the details, but it was an automated attack on the website looking for vulnerabilities over an extended period of time. The worst we lost was the contents of your average user table. We were in touch with him before he posted it to the other place, and the **** posted it anyway. I should stress we do not condone retaliation. However I would say the particular group concerned were sitting ducks with plenty of enemies. I also did have a word with some people. Quite a few people had words with some people 😉

And this, boys and girls, is why RAID is not backup.

Relevant:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23097404

On a spectacularly boring note,

Mark – […]
Also, our own business interruption insurance refused to payout on the grounds, ‘there was no physical signs of entry to the building.’ No really! […]

If you’ve only bought cover for business interruption as a result of physical loss or damage, and there isn’t any physical loss or damage, then there’s no cover to claim under.

Insurance is worth thinking about, or paying someone else to think about, if you want to rely on it to get you out a tight spot.

Have you got cyber risks cover now?

I can’t imagine there was anything worth stealing anyway, apart from press releases on the front page, that would even embarrass BikeRadar and then details of a load of old numpties who are worried their old tin can Orange 5 26er might be worth a few bob less on Ebay.

The mistake we made was using a broker who didn’t understand what we needed as a business. We have much better cover now, as a result of this. Specific hacker insurance is available. It wasn’t really anything anyone in the general insurance world knew about then. But it’s incredibly expensive!

I can’t imagine there was anything worth stealing anyway

Really? I wonder how many people use the same email/username and password on here as they do on other sites such as CRC, wiggle, Facebook or eBay? 😕

Did the chap who used to adorn the top corner of the page survive?

Cougar – Moderator

And this, boys and girls, is why RAID is not backup.
But really, RAID 5 solves that…

😉

Someone can still delete your file system at a logical level. The fact your files a splattered and duplicated in check summed parts all over several physical discs will not help you recover them when some git simply deletes them. RAID is for continuity of service despite single disc physical failure (and better performance) You need backup to recover from hacks and disasters.