Andy,

Thanks for doing what your doing. I miss everyone dearly.

Thanks for the update Andy.
Thank you for all the hard work

SirAndy,

You said "Unfortunately unscrambling them is a somewhat manual process that will take more time."

Can I help? If the work is something that you can offload, I'd be happy to spend some hours untangling things.

George

Thanks for the offer. I had several people contact me with the same question (thanks to them too btw.).

This is a rather crucial step that requires in-depth knowledge of the site code and database and how they are interacting with each other. It would most likely take more time to get someone up to speed than it would for me to fix this.

The real problem is that i have a day job. And a brand new one at that. So my time working on the site is somewhat limited. But i'll get through it.

In fact, i'm planning on rolling out some major behind the scenes improvements that have been sitting on the shelf since 2015 (yepp, you read that right) that will help ensuring that the site will be up and running for another 20+ years.
:)

Thanks again Andy
You have but to ask if any we lessor mortals can lend a hand.
I doubt you will find a soul here who would not step up to assist if we can.

Thank you Andy

WARNING: TEASER AHEAD

This includes automatic image rotation according to the meta data provided by the device that took the image.

No more upside-down phone images!
SmileWavy

Targeted attack :( I hate to wonder who might've done it.

Thank you Andy for all the work to get 914 World back online.

Thank you Andy! We appreciate you!

Thanks Andy !!!!

Andy
Thank you

Despite the hack, it's good to know that you'll be able to make the improvements you've wanted to for awhile. Thanks for straightening all of this out and helping us air out our mental issues!

Every morning I wake up and click on 914world in the hope that life is back to normal... In the words of Joni Mitchell, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'till it's gone", and I think few of us really appreciated just what an incredible resource the forum is until it went away.

Thanks for all your hard work. It is REALLY appreciated!

Please forgive my ignorance, but what is to be gained by these actions? Does someone benefit financially? or just people being people

I'm kinda curious on the motivations too.

My inital thought is that since it coincidentally came right after we bumped the "donations" thread, that maybe a hack would reveal how to get access to the PayPal account (assumption of same password and no MFA). Then fark up the forum to cover their tracks.

But taking the time to hack a boutique automotive website just to fark it up? Seems like a total waste of time. OR MAYBE IT WAS THE 911 GUYS!!!!

;)

GA

Evil people do bad things. Who knows why.

Best of luck on this Andy, we’re all rooting for you!

Was it the x19 guys again?
Maybe its a time to go and say hello SmileWavy

ha........

We could send the boys over and get them straightened out once and for all.

There's no way get someone's password, even if you had direct access to our database. That's because we don't store them. Never have.
;)

Ouch. About a month ago, I had to have Clay help me with an account issue - I'd been away a *long* while and my original email address is also long gone, so I couldn't use the regular password reset. I sure hope I don't have to have him help me with that again once you get things working. :/

Which reminds me, I need to check *this* account here at Pelican... EDIT: Yep, this one had the old email as well. Much easier to fix when you remember the password. ;)

Regarding motives, who really knows, but here's one possibility. Several years ago there was a group of people (including myself) actively participating on a chainsaw forum . The forum was an offshoot of another larger forum, this one specifically targeting one manufacturer of saws. There were roughly 20-25 active members, all sharing tons of lessons learned, solutions, and overall having a very good time bs-ing about our saws. As you can imagine, there was a mix of personalities, but we all respected each other and no one really ever got overly offended, we'd just focus on the saws and enjoy it.
Not sure exactly how it started, but one of the key members for whatever reason raised a question regarding ownership of the forum's information. Most members kinda felt like it was a communal effort. We all contributed and shared input freely and most felt "ownership" was a mute point and if anything we all "owned" it.
The forum's founder and administrator answer to this question, was that all rights to the intellectual property within the forum were owned by him. Guess he just didn't understand how to be tactful, but the way this came off upset many of the forum's members. The guy that had asked the original question about ownership started messaging us basically instigating a walkout from the forum. After a short time he deleted every post he'd ever made, basically wrecking many of the threads. Needless to say, the forum was never the same.
So, in that case, there was one person who at least felt he had a reason to bring that forum down and create whatever havoc he could. Don't think he ever did hack into the forum, even though there were some strange things that happened, but he did have a motive. I have no idea if someone, for whatever reason, may have developed some bad feelings for 914World, but that's at least one possibility. Who knows.

Dan

Some "people" have way too much time on their hands!! Why is it "feelings" seem to be so easy to upset these days?????

Based on some of the drama in our sandbox over the years, I wouldn't be surprised if someone held a grudge, but that is pretty selfish and sad if its true.

Sounds like a rockin' info forum.

Reminds me of the accordian and pencil shapener forums I used to frequent. - GA

As a saxophone player and frequenter of saxontheweb.net, I can verify that there's been much bad blood over the years over such earth-shattering issues as reed strength, "open-face" mouthpieces, synthetic pads and resonator cones, the quality of Chinese manufacturing (or copying, depending on your viewpoint), and many other hot button issues. :rolleyes:

Those are strange occurrences that happened to World... Good luck getting it back, looking forward to the improvements. Security updates?

Curious can you enable Multi Factor Authentication for the Admins? Would that have helped this situation?

Maybe the sandbox is smaller than we hoped it to be

:confused::confused:

Looking into that as we speak.
The problem is that the forum software is 20 years old. It was written long before that term even existed.

And yes, we're having our 20th anniversary this December ...
SmileWavy

A great case for while you are in there, might as well...

Sure hope our site is up again real soon, I am going through withdrawls......

Thanks Andy....For everything yu do for us 914 nuts

I once asked at a meet up about website building why anyone would care about hacking 'lil 'ol my website. The answer was they don't care who they hack - they simply use the domain as a vehicle for malware and other nefarious activities and then when it's blocked they move on to the next one. Same MO as stolen credit cards. The only thing they care about is getting access to domains that aren't on any known hacker or spam lists and therefore blocked.

Making some progress ...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1669081564.png

Andy, can I send you a PM somehow--if you have time?

Wow. Very nice. You're efforts are greatly appreciated.

Hackers beware
 

We all appreciate your high level skills Andy. If anyone can figure this out and fix it, you can. Appreciate all you do for the site.

If you need any help, please ask.

Rich

Many, many thanks Andy. Same to all admins.
We can all be patient.
Big props to Pelican for taking us in as emergency 'guests'
Good to know the prognosis is excellent.
These are strange times.
Rory

Huge thanks Andy and let me know if I can help in any way including with testing/pentesting the revived site. Also there may be a way to set up automated full snapshots of the whole (virtual) server depending on the hosting architecture/provider. MFA sounds like an awesome plan too.