VATSIM hacked by Anonymous?

[Mean Aerodynamic Chord 269]

Any news on how Vatsim is doing? You'd think they'd say something on vatsim.net but they haven't yet.

I know, weird. Their Facebook group was going crazy on the day it happened but everyone now is acting like nothing happened.

[Captain Kevin 586]

And their forums still appear to be non-functional. Interesting. Do they plan to get it back up?

[Mean Aerodynamic Chord 269]

And their forums still appear to be non-functional. Interesting. Do they plan to get it back up?

Hopefully.

[Raindance 25]

"It seems like it's a chain of hacks that is going on right now."

 

School summer holidays.  Brats have time on their hands..

[shamrockflyer 647]

A few weeks/days back Bohemia Interactive were also hacked.

[MarkW 1,491]

There was a post on the Vatsim Canada forums from one of the Vatsim admins that confirmed the hack and said that they were going to restore the forums from a previous backup.  Sounded like not too much forum data would be lost.  Also stated that before that could be done they had to implement some security stuff so this does not happen in the future.  

[MichaelSchwartz 0]

This is a few days old and many have probably seen it but it was publicly released and is from Steven Cullen, President of VATSIM:

----

Hi all,

As you are aware we have been the subject of an attack, I hope this message will help answer your questions 

The facts:

• A user had gotten access to an admin password. We have no idea how, we suspect through an exploit found last week, but we are still waiting for extra info.

• He did a couple of connections through an associated website then he went in on the forums and started deleting forums and users from within the admin panel of the forum. On cert he logged in and removed a couple of persons from the staff table, disabled all ATOs, sent some broadcasts.

• What has been changed in CERT has been restored. 

• None of our system have been hacked

• We will recover the forum from an older backup. 

Please be patient, we'll change some things to not let happen this again.


_____________________
Steven Cullen
VATSIM President

[mosteen 111]

And now it is up and running again, with 1,5 year of content gone down the drain...

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

And now it is up and running again, with 1,5 year of content gone down the drain...

 

Wow! A year and half? I can sympathize, while remembering our 2009 "event". I wonder how many pundits will come out of the wood work to castigate the VATSIM team on their backup strategies? Actually, I do know the answer to that... Too many. All of course with world class solutions after the fact, but with no financial investment, stake or even desire to invest, in bringing that world class solution into being.

[FSMP 95]

There was a post on the Vatsim Canada forums from one of the Vatsim admins that confirmed the hack and said that they were going to restore the forums from a previous backup.  Sounded like not too much forum data would be lost.  Also stated that before that could be done they had to implement some security stuff so this does not happen in the future.  

 

Looks like the Vatsim forums  are back,  BUT - Restored from a backup that is about 1.5 years old !!!        1.5 years of posts, and knowledge lost !!

 

Vatsim is great, most who run it do a good job,  etc etc  BUT.. it is almost criminal that they cannot back up a "phpbbs" Forum's mysql database reliably !! 

 

TOTALLY AMAZING INCOMPETENCE   and very sad.

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

 

 

TOTALLY AMAZING INCOMPETENCE and very sad.

 

That's over the top and I am sure stated without the entire facts at your disposal.

[FSMP 95]

...  ( double post)  deleted

 

 

 

[HansRoaming 73]

Everyone has great backups, its the restores that are the little buggers and you always find the issues with them when you need them most! 

 

Given that this is a free service am happy they got what they have got back and they have now fixed what's wrong. 

[Luke 782]

Wow! A year and half? I can sympathize, while remembering our 2009 "event". I wonder how many pundits will come out of the wood work to castigate the VATSIM team on their backup strategies? Actually, I do know the answer to that... Too many. All of course with world class solutions after the fact, but with no financial investment, stake or even desire to invest, in bringing that world class solution into being.

 

Be careful what you claim. A number of us have been advocating to VATSIM for almost a decade now that their technology investment has been woefully inadequate, both in terms of resources and processes. The recent issue with the forums is just the next logical step down the road of technological decay, just like the lack of proper pilot clients or decent security.

 

The reality is that technology today is an order of magnitude more accessible and affordable than it was in 2003, or 1998. VATSIM's leadership hasn't moved on. I hope you have. You can get multiple gigabytes of redundant cloud storage for a few dollars a month and it takes an hour or two to write the shell script to backup a mysql database and replicate it to the cloud. The skills required to do so aren't common, but in a technical community that claims over 100,000 members they cannot be found? At some point you need to stop giving them a pass.

 

I have a neat URL; it's this - http://www.deltava.org/pirep.do?id=0xd0e1

 

Over twelve years ago I flew an A320 with the FS2000 B734 panel into a wobbly landing at Heathrow. It's survived seven migrations and a complete rewrite of our systems, but it's still there. The data is replicated to three redundant locations and can be restored within 4 hours. Why? It's never needed to be - but one day it will be.

 

What's amazing is that the same software that power multi-million dollar web sites is now available to hobbyists such as you and me. The costs are negligible. What is lacking in the hobbyist arena is both the desire and the accountability. I appreciate the work you have done over the years with AVSIM but I want to respectfully suggest that you look around at the technological landscape and recognize that standards have changed - and are much higher. We should hold ourselves and others to those higher standards.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

Everyone has great backups, its the restores that are the little buggers and you always find the issues with them when you need them most! 

 

Given that this is a free service am happy they got what they have got back and they have now fixed what's wrong. 

 

That's why you test your backups regularly. We do.

 

Cheers!

Luke

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

 

 

I appreciate the work you have done over the years with AVSIM but I want to respectfully suggest that you look around at the technological landscape and recognize that standards have changed - and are much higher. We should hold ourselves and others to those higher standards.

 

This is not about AVSIM Luke. Please do not make it that. As for the VATSIM issue, I am sure that were you to throw some money their way, that they would be more than happy to address those "higher standards". From our own experience; you can dismiss today's cost all you wish, but I can tell you that if your "higher standards" are an HP Pavilion from your local Best Buy, then you are seriously off the mark. It is easy to "hold ourselves and others to those higher standards", as long as someone else pays the bills. Last time I looked, VATSIM is a free system.