April 17, 2008 by sharky
The hackers even infiltrated and commandeered their IRC channel, according to members who were chatting at the time. They’ve since restored the channel, and the new IRC message reads, “Site was hacked and is being restored - be patient-like. Asking “what happen to site? = “plz kick me!”. Yes, we have backups! There are no services, don’t ask, and if you want an invite, you’re SOL”. Killergorilla, a member at UG who was on IRC at the time of the hack, stated: “It’s been hacked. I was on the IRC server earlier and the hackers were on there. Interesting chaps.”
OK, so they have backups, but there’s no telling when the last backup was done - this is a major concern to members who’ve had to start from scratch after they were hacked the last time, and lost everything. Practice makes perfect - and perhaps with the December ‘07 hack, Underground-Gamer site admins learned to back things up properly this time. If there’s anything positive out of this, it’s that they’re updating the backend of the site to make it more hacker-proof.
One theory being thrown around is that there’s a problem with the site’s ‘Blackjack script’. Blackjack is a popular game throughout many private sites where members can gamble their site credits with others. Apparently the attack was not a ‘professional job’ and may have been conducted by amateur ’script-kiddies’ using an SQL-injection attack. The blackjack script in particular is suspect because it may have been connected to the site’s prime SQL database, and had been notoriously buggy for UG in recent times. One member poked fun at UG’s security - “Maybe they’re coming back as Underground-Gambler”.
Inside Joke: One popular conspiracy theory is that Tom Cruise and Scientology are behind the hacking. We contacted Tom, and not only does he vehemently deny any involvement in the attacks; but he also denies getting Katie Holmes pregnant.
And once again, everyone is being warned to change their password on all sites that you use the same password as UG on. The passwords in the database were secured, according to the site admins, although the precaution is likely a good idea. Both BitGamer.com and Ntorrents.net posted similar warning messages to their members to admonish them about the threats of using the same password spanning across multiple sites.
I’m guessing users will have to wait for another opportunity for “Golden Torrent Weekend” at UG. That is, if their accounts still exist this time around.
UPDATE: The private tracker PhantomP2P.com was hacked the same day.
Archived by FSFmirror
