ZeroSec Sold to New Owners, Site Falling Apart?

January 23, 2010 by sharky

ReeGed, the founding member of ZeroSec.ws and one the original 7 that defected from RlsLog.net nearly 18 months ago, announced a few days ago that ZeroSec has been sold to an unnamed buyer. More likely than not, this was the last nail in the coffin for a release blog that’s already been struggling lately to keep up with the scene. In addition to ReeGed, two other key ZS admins have also stepped down - and in fact all three admins have now been locked out of the site. It all goes downhill after that (no fault to ReeGed & Co), as new popup ads will surely repulse even the most devout readers. Somewhere nearby, Martin is silently smirking.

ZeroSec - The Announcement:

Source: ZeroSec Forums - 2010-01-19 @ 18:21

Regarding Recent Changes - By ReeGed:

 

As there has been a lot of concern recently about the ownership of ZeroSec and some of the malicious ads that have been put up on the frontpage, I hope to bring some more understanding as to how and why this has happened in this post.

 

First of all let me confirm that Pandaking, Untamed and I have intended to step down as admins of ZeroSec for quite some time now. A mixture of lack of time, lack of ambition for the project and excitement for other web based plans caused us to attempt to find someone interested in taking this project over.

 

We knew that finding someone with the same ideals for ZeroSec as us would be nearly impossible, but we saw interest in many directions. For quite some time now we’ve had plans for other projects and the only way to fully engage those plans would be to either completely end ZeroSec as a site, or pass it on to a new owner. We felt that the most reasonable solution for both our visitors and ourselves would be the latter.

 

Unfortunately as control of the site was passed on to the new adminship, some of the key points we asked for (such as a goodbye post) were forgotten. Our accounts have been removed and we’re currently unable to do anything about it without the approval of the new owner, which we will get in due time.

 

Either way, the intention of leaving the site in new hands was always to enable the rise of a new site, Project X. This is an as of yet unnamed site which we hope to develop if everything goes as planned, but will require some startup capital.

 

Regarding the mobile pop-up ads, we have been promised that they will be removed shortly. Also, you can expect a goodbye post from Pandaking, Untamed and myself in the coming couple of days.

Current editors were not informed beforehand of such an impending sale by ReeGed. It’s also unclear as to how much the site was sold for, but apparently ReeGed stated in a ZS sales pitch on a "private auction" (in which the site was reportedly sold on) that the site was taking in $800 a month from ads - which is very plausible considering their traffic. Anyone who knows anything about the inner workings on how to buy/sell a website can agree that generally the value of a site is normally calculated by the past 12-months revenue, which in this case would be ~$10,000. An offer much lower than this would clearly be rejected by any smart seller.

Lack of Editors…

As it stands now, ZeroSec has just six high-level editors on the site. And with ReeGed, pandaking and Untamed already having their WordPress accounts disabled it’s doubtful they’ll have the drive left to carry out what they planned: helping the new owners get to their feet, even implementing the "beta" site that was planned with a heap of new user-end features.

There’s still no word on whether or not current editors will stay on with ZS in the long haul; although most have stayed aboard while waiting to speak with the new owners in regards to the direction of the site. From what we gather, existing staff/editors have not yet been contacted by the new owners, who have chosen to remain silent at this time.

Bad Adverts…

ZeroSec readers from the U.S. may have already noticed some new & unusually treacherous advertisements on ZeroSec.ws. When the site was sold the new owners moved ZeroSec to US servers (most likely to cut costs) they also incorporated some nasty popups - something that readers of ZeroSec have never had to deal with before. It seems these popups are localized to target only American (and Filipino) visitors, at least so far. These ads are more than just annoying, but could also be dangerous - here’s a look at the page source:

Example of a typical ZeroSec popup ad:

And it gets worse. The cell phone advert (shown below) is particularly evil - users are enticed into entering a quick captcha-style code followed by their cellphone number. What many don’t realize is that what ends up happening is the user is then charged $9.99 each month for this "service". This particular popup ad isn’t a side effect of a banner rotation, it is intentionally added through JavaScript routing with the sms_load.php file being hosted locally on the zerosec.ws domain.

Sc0rff, a popular editor for ZeroSec, started this thread to warn ZeroSec visitors about the above threat. Evidently some viewers aren’t even able to access the site without being subjected to the above cell popup, which is clearly a scam.

To quote a ZS forum member who put it so eloquently, "Are these incompetent fools even aware they are meticulously driving their recent purchase into the ground?". Well spoken, indeed. Highly doubtful is the fact that ReeGed and crew will even get the chance to utter their “goodbye posts” on ZeroSec; we figure the "goodbye" to ZS will be much more widespread anyways.

Folks, there are plenty of other release blogs out there. If you absolutely must visit ZeroSec then use Adblock+ and NoScript add-ons for Firefox.

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