Uschi banned from Forum

[Heinz van Kempen]

Hi Volker,

Uschi just called me by phone that she received a message that she is banned from Winboard Forum. Any special reason for this?

Best Regards
Heinz

[Guenther Simon]

I hope this is no hack attack from a certain person?

Regards,
Guenther

[Heinz van Kempen]

Hi Guenther ,

I do not understand, maybe you can write it via email to my address, if you do not want to write it here.

jaque64@aol.com

First I thought it is because of not giving the full name, but surely Volker will understand that for a woman this is rather risky and knowing where she lives anyone could get her address, etc..

If there is any doubt in her identity a phone call by Volker or other trusted person to Vienna could be helpful.

Best Regards
Heinz

[Richard Pijl]

I've checked the ban list, and (as expected) Uschi is not there. I'll check with Volker tomorrow what could be the case here
Richard.

[Heinz van Kempen]

Hi Richard ,

thanks for your help. We will see tomorrow what happened.

Best Regards
Heinz

[Volker Pittlik]

Hi Richard ,

thanks for your help. We will see tomorrow what happened.

Best Regards
Heinz

First of all my apologies to Uschi. Of course there is absolutely no suspicion against her. The same thing happened to Wael Daeb a few days ago. So let me try to explain what is going on.

Since a few days I've noticed an incredible number of accesses to the forum. Not just a few thousand Zappa downloads as during the World Championships. No, hundreds of millions accesses during a few hours! This is a sort of attack in order to crash the database the forum is running on and possibly to crash the server itself or to get control over the forum or the server. The method the attackers are using is a so called SQL-injection (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sql_injection or much more detailed in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL-Injektion. (We (the admins) can clearly see that in our log files. There is no need to email idiotic "analysis" of this problem to us and even uninvolved person. Especially not by those who promised us that they

...will return and on that day this place will die...

These activities are much worse than a dirty trick. They are a crime in themself. To make it worse these people also hide their identity by using faked IP-addresses. In order to identify the source of the attacks I banned a very few IP addresses. From these addresses an incredible number of accesses to the forum has been made. For example the second most accesses have been made from a server in Iceland. Although the people up there are obviously in favour for chess it is absolutely unlikely that they visit the forum more often than the rest of Europe and the whole Americas.

Obviously Uschi is using of this banned servers and can't use the forum at the moment. A few days ago Wael was the victim.

Although to ban certain servers is not the best way to handle this problems I see the attacks have stopped since a few hours. I don't know if my hoster found a way to get them out (of course they are informed about the attacks), if our own protection systems served its purpose or if the idiots just found something else to destroy I only observe they have stopped at the moment. Hopefully they don't only take a break.

I'm going to contact Uschi now. We will see how to go on. We got some hints who could be involved in this attacks. Besides the obvious suspicious there is another one. Just look in the readme of recently released engines which are send by email to selected testers. Of course I got a copy of that specific readme.

Regards

Volker

[Heinz van Kempen]

Hi Volker ,

this sounds horrible. Hope you can get rid of these problems somehow.

Best Regards
Heinz

[Volker Pittlik]

... Hope you can get rid of these problems somehow...

It seems they somehow stopped. You have found already additional information in your mailbox. Please keep that information confidential.

BTW: The password protection even for read access was meant to protect this forum for similar attacks. Obviously some people found a way around it and the password is absolutely useless. Therfore it is gone. Reading and searching is possible for everyone again. Posting, viewing the memberlist, using email and private message system is reserved for registered members.

Regards

Volker

[Uschi]

Hi all,

thanks to everyone for your help and information.

Hoping the attacks have definitively stopped now!
If there are another ones in connection with my server,please ban it again as long as everything is cleared.

Best regards,

Uschi

p.s.: What a self-discovery to face the murk dungeon of the banned ones.

[Guenther Simon]

Hi all,

thanks to everyone for your help and information.

Hoping the attacks have definitively stopped now!
If there are another ones in connection with my server,please ban it again as long as everything is cleared.

Best regards,

Uschi

p.s.: What a self-discovery to face the murk dungeon of the banned ones. Wink

Welcome again

Best wishes,
Guenther

[Volker Pittlik]

Hi all,

...
Hoping the attacks have definitively stopped now!

...

Not in total, but I hope it doesn't disturb to usual business here anymore. It seems my hoster found an efficient way to block most of it. They also found the reason for the forum "blackouts" every half hour. It shouldn't happen anymore.

Volker

[Daniel Mehrmann]

Hi all,

...
Hoping the attacks have definitively stopped now!

...

Not in total, but I hope it doesn't disturb to usual business here anymore. It seems my hoster found an efficient way to block most of it. They also found the reason for the forum "blackouts" every half hour. It shouldn't happen anymore.

Volker

Hi Volker,

that's are really great news ) I hope you're right.
Anyway, thank you for a great friendly place.

Best,
Daniel