SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

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Mike Ratledge
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SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by Mike Ratledge »

Well, this is becoming a little discouraging. I have concrete evidence that someone is screwing with the website, and I have recorded enough forensics information to figure out who and where they are. Being a Cyber Security Subject Matter Expert for the U S Military, I will use all my tools to figure this out and take the person or people to Federal District Court (I worked for the Executive Offices for United States Attorneys Network Security Operations Center for 8 years until December 2012) to answer a "Cyber Intrusion" complaint, which is not something to make little of these days, the last one that was adjudicated here ended up with the person being offered to either do 5 years in jail or pay a $5,000,000 fine and $17,500,000 restitution to the victim for lost income & sales.

I'm not an easy target - although it took me an hour to figure out it happened, I had the website back online within 5 minutes. There are 3 levels of backups done daily, a 4th done weekly offsite as well as hourly backups of the SQL DB tables "into the cloud", which is how I restored the board - to 48 minutes before it crashed - a "one-button" restore from "CodeGuard" services which protects us from malicious intruders and hardware failures by doing a combination of hourly, daily & weekly backups to their server (to a server farm in Atlanta, outside of the HostGator system in Dallas) and I also do random server backups, SQL DB backups and "home/root directory" backups both to the server itself and to my laptop at home - which gets tossed onto my 2TB NAS automatically.

I'm going to figure this out, I'm tired of fighting it. I was told yesterday that the previous owner couldn't get in any more. That makes sense, since I locked him out and deleted his accounts rather than risk anything security-wise after Dan (in Sao Poalo Brazil) rebuilt the USER and MESSAGE sql DB tables by hand and restored the system on January 25th. Since then I have changed hosting companies, implemented a multi-level backup system both onsite in Dallas, offsite in Atlanta and into the "Amazon cloud" system, not to mention regular backups to the server and my laptop any time I make a change in the configuration. I won't tolerate this, and I don't have to. When I figure it out, whoever it is will be getting a tap on the shoulder from a U S Marshall - or designated overseas official for the State Department in that country. Like I said, I'm tired of worrying about it, I'm going to run it to ground from my side.
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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by MagikFingerz »

Good to hear, Mike. I had a bad feeling when I saw the site being down, and thought it couldn't be an accident after all the steps you took to make it run smoothly.

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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by th4mo »

Hey Ratman, It's really awesome to have someone with your extensive skills and experience running the show here. I wouldn't have thought that a simple cardist website would become a target for malfeasance... :?

It's totally reassuring to know that you've got things well in hand with all the backups and protections now. :D

Before we go implying that anyone in particular has had anything to do with today's incident... what is the evidence to back this up?

You say above that you have enough evidence to figure out who is behind this, but at the end you make it sound like you are not even sure if the culprit or culprits are in the U.S.? :?:
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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by Mike Ratledge »

th4mo, these days the cyber-criminals can make it look like they are anywhere they want, we see it all the time where the Chinese will hack a system in Brazil or Portugal so that it starts sending out malware or acts as a C2 ("Command & Control") server for some staged exploit.

I have narrowed down the apparent source of the intruder(s) to Chicago, oddly enough. That doesn't mean much - if anything, because they could easily be using a proxy or corporate VPN to make it appear that's where they are. Doesn't matter, I'll still figure it out. Chicago happens to handle most of the communications into and out of much of Canada as well, for example - well, except for far eastern portions, which come in through Buffalo NY.

I finally got a call from Mike of BMPW just now - he threatened to sue me for something - hell, I don't know - he didn't say. Let's just say he has someone inside obviously feeding him exactly what goes on here, so there is absolutely no way he could possibly claim he was coming back for any reason - he knew better. Enough of the drama - we're above that. Let's just let sleeping dogs lie, as they say. I'm done with it, just let it die.
>Mike<
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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by th4mo »

Mike Ratledge wrote:...I'm done with it, just let it die.
Well, you brought him up! :lol: So i thought maybe there was more to it that you weren't sharing... but that's your prerogative i suppose. But you are right, we've got plenty going on here to celebrate about without dredging up the past. I'm sure Mike still has friends here, and that's fine with me too... maybe they can help him deal with his issues in a more constructive manner.
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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by montecarlojoe »

At the moment we're treating the comms from Mike F and the attack as purely coincidental.

It IS easy to jump to conclusions, so it is important that we frame our news / announcements carefully, and try not to mix statements as to create unintended associations/implications.
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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by Mike Ratledge »

montecarlojoe wrote:At the moment we're treating the comms from Mike F and the attack as purely coincidental.

It IS easy to jump to conclusions, so it is important that we frame our news / announcements carefully, and try not to mix statements as to create unintended associations/implications.
Oh, I totally agree, Joe - and putting anybody else's words in my mouth doesn't make me say it. I don't care, I just want it to go away.
>Mike<
"You can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself"
They say "Ignorance is bliss". Obviously, some people are much happier than others...

Members are encouraged to
Show Us Your Cards!


Our UC2021 Decks entitled
"Odd Fellows"
by Lorenzo Gaggiotti / @Stockholm17
Coming soon: AKA
«Eighth Annual Decks»


UC members help maintain Portfolio52
THE Playing Card Database Online
Contact ecNate for details and access


UC2019 "Seventh Annual Decks"
by Montenzi Design
Funded 207% on KS: HERE


>>> UC Deck Sales <<<


Insert disclaimer here...
All information posted as fact is accurate at the time of posting to the best of my knowledge.
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Re: SITE DOWNTIME 23-February-2014 - SQL DB crash

Unread post by montecarlojoe »

Yeah - it will be good to draw a line under the old chapter and move on to the next!
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