Making Tracks Site has been seriously "Hacked"

[desiro5]

The term more often used is "script kiddie"

(sorry punctuation delete etc all sorts of keys just stopped working will investigate after this message!!!)

A "hacker" is someone who can understand systems and work out the exploits understand what the problems might be and then how he (or she) might use them to their own advantage Frequently a hacker then releases tools to quickly leverage those hacks

Script Kiddies then use those hacking scripts to repeatedly blast lots of sites makes them feel really good about themselves really big and in fact they understand next to zero about what is going on quite frequently

The Joomla hack was just a script kiddie using a script that a clever hacker came up with

Matt

Thanks for the explanation Matt - my point is clear now.

[buffy500]

Before anyone needs to post, the MT site is dead again.

This time the 'hacker' is the host themselves who have decided to move the site's physical files without mentioning it and changing the path which breaks most applications..

[Easilyconfused]

OK - thanks for the update Dave.

Hosting companies - don't you just love them

[lumpchase]

Not this one! I fear that the host we are using is not as great as they once were (and that wasn't very).

They have said its going to be about 24 hours to get the site up and running again, at which point - personally - I'd like to just f'it off and get the stuff off and onto another host, but its not entirely my decision to make.

Either way, if you have purchased from MT recently, we cant even get access to your order to dispatch it, so its going to be next week now (unless they pull their finger out and its back up late tomorrow in time for saturday post!)

Tony

[glasgowworks]

Certainly not good news. MT cannot even get access to dispatch the products because their website is down and no one may get their order until possibly Monday. Nothing at Making Tracks Online is working at all. Untill then, Making Tracks Online is temporary suspended

[buffy500]

Certainly not good news. MT cannot even get access to dispatch the products because their website is down - Nothing at Making Tracks Online is working at all this means and no one may get their order until possibly Monday. Untill then, Making Tracks Online temporary suspended

There an echo in here?

[lumpchase]

is there an echo in here!

Ali, what was the point in just repeating everything I just said? It wasn't conjecture or ponderings, it was cold hard fact that was nasty enough to swallow the first time, let alone with you writing it all again!

[glasgowworks]

is there an echo in here!

Ali, what was the point in just repeating everything I just said? It wasn't conjecture or ponderings, it was cold hard fact that was nasty enough to swallow the first time, let alone with you writing it all again!

I wasn't repeating, Tony. I was only commenting.

[buffy500]

Well the update from Servage is that they have managed to delete all our site and applications....

So much for will be back up and running in 24 hours. It took them longer than that to tell us what the problem was.

Flossers.

[Easilyconfused]

At this point I don't want to see any other comments about this situation. Dave and Tony can update this thread as more information comes available. Comments from people not connected to Making Tracks are not helpful

[lumpchase]

Thanks John and the UKTS Moderation Team for keeping an eye on this thread for us.

For now, we are not worrying about the Making Tracks domain ... It will be back up but at over 20GB of files to put back, I think it may take some time.

I have set up a mirror to allow the MT Forums to go live again. They are hosted at

forums.trainsimdevelopers.co.uk

I don't think there is actually *anything* lost from any of the databases so thats at least one saving grace.

We are working on getting the Joomla and Shop sites up again ASAP but this is going to be a very long weekend for me I suspect.

Dave is currently uploading all the files back onto the mirror provided by GMPublicity and also back to the MT Website but we are not sure yet if/what files are lost or missing.

If you have an order on the shop, it has NOT been lost and we will ship as soon as we can actually get back into the system properly.

Please bear with us at this VERY upsetting and stressful time! If users have a genuine question that has not been answered then please do post it. If users just want to flood the thread and boost there ego post count, please do it elsewhere. I don't think I need to say anything about delays to products as nothing new will be released until this has been resolved properly.

[lumpchase]

After a very long couple of days for me and Dave I think we are able to post some very positive news ...

At 16:32 on Thursday 3rd September our Servage decided to email us saying that they were IMMEDIATELY moving our account from one node of their servers to another node, with no warning whatsoever.

This took us by surprise as by the time we had the email, everything was already down.

They said this would take 24 hours and everything would be back up and running.

We then had no access to FTP, web, forums or anything for a full 28 hours before Servage decided to tell us that they had now lost all of our files hosted online (this was some 21gb of data).

It was immediately decided that we would get a mirror up of the forums and joomla so that we at least had a presence and users knew what was happening. This has been provided by GMPublicity on their server space away from the dodgy Servage node. There are no file downloads or Operating Notice available on this server but pretty much the rest of the MT Website (at least the public side of it) is now up and running.

We are now working as fast as we can to get everything back up and running on our proper domain at http://www.makingtracks-online.co.uk but this will take some time (I suspect weeks rather than hours) to complete and in the mean time, this domain will remain active.

If there is any further news I will post it on the forums at viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3526

For now the shop will remain closed until we are certain its working correctly on the MT domain and this will take a few days at least. No orders have been lost and we will dispatch those orders as soon as we have the shop working again.




07/09/2009 02:00 - Latest update guys...

We have now got pretty much everything working again, most of it is available on the mirror, but Joomla, Forums and Support are now available on the original Making Tracks Online domain again. The Shop is having further problems which we are still working on getting it back onto the original domain but it is happy over at TrainSimDevelopers domain for now and all existing orders will be shipped on Monday

With regards the Joomla (http://www.makingtracks-online.co.uk part of the website), it appears that there are a few files missing from the File Download Library as listed below...

* MT HST - Great Western Liveries Pack
* Irish Enterprise / LSE Signal Upgrade Pack
* TSection.DAT build 38

All these files are pretty recent uploads to the system and were not on the latest site backup we had. If anyone has these files (the Release version not a BETA copy) please could they contact me to arrange for the files to go back on-line ASAP. I have not removed the details from the File Library but if anyone tries to download they will get a 404 Error for now.

If anybody finds anything else that isn't where it should be, please post a note on the Website/Forums/Shop section on the forums and we will investigate it.

Thanks to everyone who has emailed and posted to wish us a speedy recovery on the website. Dave and I are just glad that we had semi-regular backups of everything which has helped a lot.

Servage have given a apology now and admitted that we have not received the service of late that we should have. While not fixing the problems, we suspect that this must have been a big step for them ... we shall see how they go after this!

[phill70]

Hi Tony

You can get the Tsection from here.

Glad to see you are up and running again.

Glyn

[ashgray]

Tony

I downloaded the signals upgrade and HST GW livery pack before the MT site went down, so I'll happily send these through to you tonight when I'm back from work, if you wish - PM me with your e-mail address.

Ash

[lumpchase]

Thanks guys, I have all the files back up again now