Not a troll post!

Just a brief thought...

There are 2400+ "prepared" members registered with Michael's site. The recent sabotage by hacker(s) has temporarily shut down the message forum. To post on that forum, one must register with name, address, etc. So, the question is, do the hacker(s) now have this list of members, and, if so, what will they do with the information? Post the information somewhere, harass them, or visit some of them on January 2nd?

-- a longtime lurker (unlisted@anon.com), November 03, 1999

Answers

It is not necessary that the registration information is captured to a database within the server space reserved under a particular domain name. However inefficient (though a bit more secure and cheaper), registration information might be collected as email which is processed downline from the web server. Dorrit should know whether or not registrations were at risk during the hacking. If registrations contain financial information like credit card numbers, they should probably be notifying all the members to get new credit cards asap.

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (faryna@groupmail.com), November 03, 1999.

I didn't have to put in an address when I registered, just an e-mail address.

As for visits, I am not too concerned about those. If the guy is stupid enough to try to visit me Jan 2'nd to get my preps, he's going to find out why crooks don't like breaking in on armed people... :)

Incidentally, I wouldn't call him a hacker. More like an immature twit. Everything he did was as a regular dalnet user. He didn't have any special hacked access or anything.

-- James Collins (jacollins@thegrid.net), November 03, 1999.

I passed your question along to Michael Hyatt this morning and this was his response - "The bottom line is that we don't know. However, the only thing people give us is an e-mail address and some other trivial information. They could get most of this just by visiting the board and scanning the posts. The worst that could happen is that these people get additional spam. I don't think someone would go to this much trouble for 2,500 names. If you want to spam people, you can buy 100,000 addresses for $10."

Our board is being moved to a new server now and we are hopeful to be back very soon, hopefully, by tomorrow.

Our thanks to all who have been so supportive in a difficult time.

-- Dorrit (tbungard@iomet.com), November 03, 1999.

Name and address are not required. You are completely wrong.

It is not necessary to log into a message board in order to hack it. Ignorant, or misleading - but completely wrong again.

 
Now, what could possibly be your motivation for jumping to such an alarming conclusion?
What would be the benefit of needlessly scaring innocent people?
"Not a troll post," eh?
Something lower?

-- Grrr (grrr@grrr.net), November 04, 1999.