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Thread: Sega-16 Taken Down

  1. Sega-16 Taken Down

    As you may know, Sega-16 was hacked twice in the last month or so. It was down for an extended period of time initially, upgraded its forum, then was hacked again. Today we were informed by the company that owns TNL's server that Sega-16 was implicated in a phishing attempt and we were to either remove the offending files or the entire server would be taken offline.

    I tried contacting Melf, who owns Sega-16, through his forum, but was not able to do so. I sent him a message saying that given this third strike it was too much risk to keep Sega-16 running on our box. I have given him several hours to reply, but as it is early morning in his time zone and he is probably in bed for the night, I must pull the site now.

    Until I hear from Melf, I'm going to redirect his domain to this thread so people can be easily aware of the situation. It is very unfortunate that this is happening to such a valuable resource as Sega-16 and such an exceptionally nice man as Melf. However, since TNL is on the same server and in the same block of IPs, I have to do what is right.

    This is an ongoing problem, even with the files being removed, since I just pulled up the following warning in Firefox:

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    Last edited by Nick; 22 May 2011 at 01:57 AM.

  2. #2
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  3. It's too late for drama, guess I'll have to wait 'til morning to revisit this thread.

  4. wow it's happening again. What's with people wanting to hack that site. I was wondering how I ended up here. I thought I might have clicked on the wrong auto-url on my browser.

  5. #5
    Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Nick.
    Quote Originally Posted by EvilMog View Post
    Screw being smart. This is TNL.

  6. I blame Nintendo.

  7. I feel as if my heart has been ripped from my chest.

    Is this permanent?

    How difficult will it be to get the site back up and running like normal?

    What caused all of this, something random, or is someone hell bent on destroying the site?

    So much hard work was put into the site and its forums, such a shame.

  8. Here's some more detail and a theory about what happened.

    Yesterday, cka and I were contacted by the company that owns the server. This is a huge, premier Web host with excellent customer service whom we have been with for several years. The message said that a page on Sega-16 was phishing, which is a violation of federal and state laws and would result in our entire server being taken offline if it the offending files were not pulled within four hours. We have never received an abuse ticket before and I hope to never receive one again.

    The page in question was an exact copy of an eBay page. It not only looked like an eBay auction, it had all the eBay JavaScript intact.

    Based on the timing, with the other two episodes of bad Sega-16 news being so recent and this report coming on a Sunday, I am guessing that someone reported the page to Google and/or the host with the hope that the site would be blocked in search engines and browsers and ultimately blacklisted from the server.

    I have no idea how many other ticking time bombs are contained within the directories of Sega-16, but I can no longer jeopardize our site, whose databases have already been deleted once due to hackers attracted by Sega-16.

    The Sega-16 forum was up to date with all security patches, but the main site is not safe to host until it is redesigned with current security measures in place and reviewed for content that could expose the site to further phishing claims in the future.

    When TNL's articles moved over to a database-driven layout, it was a big hassle. Like Melf, I really don't want to deal with Apache, MySQL, and PHP. I just want to provide content and a place for the community to gather. I will do what I can to help Sega-16 find a new home.

  9. I'm already in talks with someone about new hosting, so hopefully we'll be up soon.

    What I want to know is if this was an exploit from the first hack or came later. I don't know where else it could come from, since the exploit used before was fixed and the forums upgraded. I do wish I had a bit more time to find out what it was and what exactly needed to be done to have the site stable. We never had this issue in 7 years, and to suddenly see everything full of holes is more than a bit disconcerting.

  10. There was no exploit this time, as far as I am aware. Like I said, you had a page in there that looked exactly like an eBay auction and even used the scripts from eBay. That was a bad idea, but for however long it was there, no one really noticed or cared. Now that someone is intent on hammering away at Sega-16, it was reported.

    As I said to you in the PM, I will help however I can within reason to get you a new host. Your files are intact, but they need to be looked over and put into a new template before they are safe to go live.

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