AAARGH! Bikejournal.com down!!

[lph]

arrh, I'm getting all twitchy here. Want to log my miles for yesterday... want to log my miles for today...*twitch*

[SouthernBelle]

It's up, but read only now while they check things out etc.

[Velobambina]

Still down!

[mary9761]

It says that it's read only, but I've not even been able to get the forum open to read. I hope it's back up soon.

[lph]

*meep*

[Fredwina]

from the banner on the webpage, it looks like Slantz had a hacker attack and corrupt the database. I imagine the extra downtime is to repair the database and make the site more hacker-proof.

[Geonz]

Let's see... I had 34.5 miles on Monday, 23 on Tuesday, and 16 yesterday. Now there's a wreckered.

I was just reading that the esteemed candidates in teh campaign had people hacking into their files, too...

[mary9761]

As most of you know by now, we had an automated attack on our database, Monday, Nov. 3rd. Nothing personal as far as I understand - but that doesn't make it any less vicious. As a result, many records were overwritten with a malicious URL (website address). This resulted in the following unfortunate cascade of events:

1) The site was down: We had to take the database offline for 4.5 days while we attempted to fix the damage.

2) Some data was lost: In the course of attempting repairs, I found a backup task had stopped a few weeks ago after a security update, and some backup files were accidentally deleted as well. This resulted in the inabililty to easily restore the database to its proper state. The ultimate result of this, after much heroic rescue effort, is that some of the text data truncated by the attack is not recoverable. Thankfully it did not infect journal data directly, but, most notably and regretfully, blog entries from the past two months are decimated. Other areas affected, which need to be updated by their respective contributors, are recent changes or additions (past 2 months) to the following items: bike descriptions; bike club, route, organized ride, and bike shop information; and personal effort levels and bike chain maintenance descriptions. Note that none of the records are missing, but the text is truncated to 30 characters or less in most of these cases. Thanks for your help in restoring the data.

3) The site must be re-designed to prevent this attack in the future. As a result, I'm reviewing all pages and updating them as needed. Until they pass inspection, the pages will not be accessible. I will focus on getting ride entry back up as soon as possible, hopefully by the end of this weekend. The status bar above will track overall progress in restoring the site.

4) We aren't out of the woods yet: Note that we haven't been able to verify everything is working as it should, so there may be other issues that we haven't uncovered yet. Overall, it looks like we are on the recovery path now, but there may be some rocky trails ahead of us the next few days.

I apologize greatly for the downtime and loss of data. It's been a tough week for everyone who enjoys the site, myself included. I will extend all active premier memberships by a week because of the problems. On the positive side, the site will improve as a result, and our nightly backups will be monitored so that this can't happen in the future. Lots of thanks go to dallasbikr who spent many hours during a busy work week to get the database restored. And big thanks to SouthernYankee who is helping to review the site updates needed to prevent this going forward. Thank you all for the supportive emails and for your extended patience during this time.
- slantz

[mary9761]

I was able to log my 11/5 ride into my journal this morning. Not much else working yet but at least it appears the journal function is back up. I don't envy Slantz reworking the entire site because of some jerk..