News:Furtopia forums down after hack
March 2, 2008
The forums of online furry community Furtopia are down, and will not be restored in their current form, says site administrator WhiteShepherd.[1]
The site suffered several attacks believed to be rooted in vulnerabilities in the forum software, Ikonboard. A hacker reportedly vandalized the forums, defaced the websites of hosted furry artists, and ultimately erased the hard drive on which the site was stored. Just hours after a three-day rebuild following the attack, the site was "destroyed" again.
In his announcement, WhiteShepherd blames splinter forum LOLfurries for the attack, saying that "passwords and private messages" were stolen, and "re-posted on their forums in the interest of providing [them] amusement."
However, regulars of LOLfurries disclaim responsibility for the hacker's actions.[2] Forum co-administrator Icono cites one "supercutefurri58" as the user responsible, mentioning that they used a proxy "at all times." The user joined the forums on October 5 last year.[3] On March 2, the website was pulled offline, with a message from forum administrator RabidRick in its place. [4]
Work is underway to set up a temporary forum for Furtopia members, which WhiteShepherd hopes will be up by Monday evening. He plans to import data from the old database when a permanent solution is in place.
On Wednesday, March 5th, Livejournal user scf58, signing off as "supercutefurri58", posted a message to his blog disputing the events surrounding the attacks as well as the involvement of LOLfurries members.[5] The message was linked from the Furtopia community journal[6]. It appears to claim responsibility for the attacks.
Quotes
| To say the least: their actions are a disappointing testament of their personalities. --WhiteShepherd[1] |
| It was an individual who only comes around to post drama. --Icono[2] |
| He's really the first troll who started doing drastic shit like hacking, but he's been taken care of apparently. --Kawazu[2] |
| This site is on temporary (possibly permanent) suspention. I thought I made it clear that the fact that other people on here (including some of the admins) would condone stuff like vandalism did not sit well with me, at all. It is childsh to try and destroy someone else's hard work and the fact that everyone seemed to be supporting them makes me think this site existed for all the wrong reasons. [sic] --RabidRick[4] |
Sources
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Restoring Furtopia forums from an attack - forum administrative email, WhiteShepherd (March 1, 2008)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Conversation in #lolfurries IRC channel (March 2, 2008)
- ↑ LOLfurries user profile - supercutefurri58 (March 2, 2008)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Message on LOLfurries' front page, accessed March 2, 2008
- ↑ "Dear Furtopia" - scf58 (March 5, 2008)
- ↑ "Reflecting on the crisis..." - Karizma, karizma_thebard, furtopia (March 5, 2008)