What happened, what we know, what we don't know

originally posted by: Coelacanth55
thanks to all for the repair / rebuild

DBC sorry you had to deal with so much garbage.

After years of writing online, I should have figured that I'd have irritated some folks.

I am thankful my account was restored. And it is frightening that this site is so vulnerable, although I kinda already knew it was. So I'm also thankful that I have passwords for this site that I don't use elsewhere. Thanks for all the info. God bless us, every one. Even you. You know who you are...

Jk

Much love, I'm glad to see us endure... Again... And again...

Though it felt like total chaos, it sure seems like the primary riff-raff was limited to a small handful of malicious opportunists.

Hack, database error, or otherwise, once it became apparent to the world that ATS was adrift, these jerks hopped on and did their thing.

Maybe they were part of some grander plan, but I doubt it, felt more like a juvenile attempt by a few like minded individuals to plaster enough disgusting hate speech as to cause ATS to be seen in a bad light by someone important enough to get us "cancelled" higher up, by the host, perhaps.

Lets face it, if one of the "big boys" wanted to take us out it would be done and done already.

This does go to show, however, that the open and (mostly) CIVIL dialogue that happens here is enough to 'irritate some folks' as DB puts it, no doubt from both sides of the aisle.

Good ol' ATS, keep up the great work!

Thank you guys for all the hard work that was done to get ATS back... I lurk a lot, but I love ATS for my news and other stuff.

a reply to: DBCowboy

What do you mean, "some folks"?

a reply to: Djarums


Thank you for getting me back in, I'm no popular poster but Ive visited here daily since 2016

To all those whose hard work and diligence is brining ATS back to a semblance of glory...




Bravo you beautiful bastards and bastardesses, bravo!

I know others have said this.

THANK YOU and Thanks to the mysterious person who donated their time and expertise to help fix ATS.

I appreciate the mods more than you can know, especially after this debacle.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

I'm not going to try to restore my old account, it's obvious what/who it is. You can let it "die". I don't do this for stars and flags etc. It is intrinsically rewarding to participate in this community.

originally posted by: FlyersFan
Question - Are any of the moderators in contact with the site owners and do the site owners know what has happened?

This seems to be the most pertinent question. The friend sounds like a sweetie for sure, but without the owners anywhere in the picture Djarums has painted, it also reads a lot like a B&E and squatting.

Not saying there wasn't just cause. Just saying. And while that sits just fine with me I am surprised to see such...err...shall we say communalism win out over the rights of ownership. This crowd? Really?

The owners must be compliant. Surely?

I'm skeptical. Nice story but it isn't the whole thing.

At this point, I'm so pissed at all this that I will trust no one now. Any story concerning this situation, no matter how credible or who it comes from, will no longer be acceptable to me at face value.

I say abandon this sinking ship now and find alternatives.

ETA: I will go with ashisnotanidiot in their post about this, that one seems credible to me . . .

Not buying it.
Databases are password protected.
In order to reset the Mods' passwords, someone had to have the database password. Mods don't have that password. That's something an owner and his delegated IT team would have.
There doesn't seem to be an owner or IT team present.
Sounds to me like someone got ransomwared, and someone paid just enough to have a couple logins decrypted.

I've said 'thank you' many times in the last two days, but I'll say it one more time for all the mods: thanks for all the hard work that got ATS going again
Some of you mods have annoyed me in the past, when threads or posts were deleted, but if the last week taught me anything then it is how much moderators are needed in a forum like ATS! None of you walked away, while you could've so easily...
I have renewed appreciation for the 'mod-job'! lol... and thanks


And to everyone saying that they don't buy the 'story': I have followed the events since day one on the discord and watched it unfold exactly like Djarums describe in his OP! It's not a lie, it's not a made up story, nothing is left out.
As for the 'outside help', if you read on the forums there is enough written about that.

I know we get all kinds of b.s. here and posters that claim things that never come to fruition, but the last thread posted before things went awry was a new member who was going to reveal something.

As I build the nerve to share my story in greater detail and depth, I have to ask. If hypothetically speaking, someone had been constant contact with a “Visitor” from “Elsewhere” and could potentially back up some of their claims with actual, materialistic, hands on evidence. Where would that individual go, or contact with the resources and infrastructure in place to document the hypothetical individual, who may or may not live in the Southeast US and has hypothetically been experiencing the outside of the ordinary situation for thirty one of his nearly forty five years alive?

I would appreciate any assistance and or direction and again you have my word that you will be the first to hear my story publicly. I will probably contact whoever you guys recommend, but in the time that I do and the time they do whatever they do or whatever happens next, I will post my story here for the very first time.

Coincidence?

Will we hear from C.J. again?

One Small Step For Man

a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

I want you to take a good , long look at my account...

Im a, literal, random noone on this board but i was one of the first handful of people to get onto my account.

I was not helped by a mod of ats.

What djarum said it the truth, to the best of anyones knowledge.

You sound a little miffed that you wernt on discord at the time and missed out on all the happenings.

Its ok ... You are still a special boy

a reply to: KindraLabelle2

And to everyone saying that they don't buy the 'story': I have followed the events since day one on the discord and watched it unfold exactly like Djarums describe in his OP! It's not a lie, it's not a made up story, nothing is left out. As for the 'outside help', if you read on the forums there is enough written about that.

As did I. It was quite epic watching it all unfold on Discord in real-time. I was fortunate enough to be logged in, when all the massive revelations came out.

For those wanting confirmation, go to discord and scroll back 10 days or so….. lol

Thanks for resetting my password Djarums

Now I have two accounts, if I was a deceiver, I would star my own posts....naw, that would be too much work to do. Although I could discuss things with myself, beats talking to myself out loud. Oh wait, you do not talk to yourself out loud because people would think you are nuts....that would be the same thing on here. I still should do it anyway, just to practice on dealing with a nut.

originally posted by: rickymouse
Thanks for resetting my password Djarums

Now I have two accounts, if I was a deceiver, I would star my own posts....naw, that would be too much work to do. Although I could discuss things with myself, beats talking to myself out loud. Oh wait, you do not talk to yourself out loud because people would think you are nuts....that would be the same thing on here. I still should do it anyway, just to practice on dealing with a nut.

Hi rickymouse, sorry for stealing your name. I did give you one star just to show I can cheat if I have to.

Oh rats, I went to add a star and can't star in board business. Can't even cheat if I want to.

I'm so very grateful and thankful for all the hard work from Djarums, DTOM, and the rest of the mods; as well as our mystery benefactor on Discord. Thank you all for being there for us and helping us get our original accounts back. None of you owed us anything, but still went and sacrificed your time for us. I am so appreciative of this.

I think we were starting to take the mods for granted. This certainly has changed things in that regard. Thinking back on how quickly things went down the toilet makes me shudder. Without mods, this site was temporarily Lord of the Flies.

I have no idea what lies ahead in the future of ATS. I want you all to know, though I am a lefty, and have had some vehement disagreements with some of you, I think we all came together to bite back at the trolls and fake accounts in a great way. We defended each other regardless of our political beliefs. I think that shows the strength and resiliency of this community.

As for the absentee owners and their so called "caretakers" - well, I guess I'll keep my mouth shut. I appreciate having my account back and wouldn't want to put it in jeopardy.

originally posted by: Another_Nut
a reply to: TheMichiganSwampBuck

I want you to take a good , long look at my account...

Im a, literal, random noone on this board but i was one of the first handful of people to get onto my account.

I was not helped by a mod of ats.

What djarum said it the truth, to the best of anyones knowledge.

You sound a little miffed that you wernt on discord at the time and missed out on all the happenings.

Its ok ... You are still a special boy

I will second this. I was one of the first people to get my account back and im a nobody here too. I also was in the chat when everything was going down - the mods here that are in the chat - are very normal regular people- and were just as upset about everything as us regular posters here.
The person who helped get our accounts back asked for nothing, did what he could and that was that.

Id be grateful. And if one does not feel comfortable, one does not have to post. Best to never post personal stuff online anywhere anyways.
Just enjoy what we have here - make the best of it - its the one place you can post and not have a plethora of obnoxious trolls ruin good discussion.

originally posted by: ThatDamnDuckAgain
@Chronaut

That doesn't mean just handing out the keys, but having the code exposed so that it can be modified, tested in a sandbox, and then promoted to production, via a rigorous procedure.

The websites code is probably IP of the new owner. Besides that, at this point, making the source code available would be a disaster, this is a real bad idea. Extreme bad idea!!! This is what a hacker would do right away. You literally give them the keys to ATS doing that.

The only reason why open source works in terms of finding and eliminating vulnerable code, is when it is open source from the beginning. Opening up now, with the current situation would lead to the hateful people developing exploits.

Almost like if you want to have bad things happen. Even I with mediocre c# skills know this! And you seem knowledgeable, so I wonder what you thought when you requested this. And now you request again. It has a certain taste, either you don't think about your demands or you want ATS to be gone.

Pick your shoe.

Most successful CMS's started life as open source projects, and some still are. Open source does not mean insecure. Currently, government and military sites use open source operating systems and CMS's.

And yes, if security is not integral to the design, the site would be vulnerable. However, the site is now more vulnerable than that, and any future attempts to resolve issues will take a long time to resolve if there is only one or two (if that) who can fix it.

What you are arguing for amounts to doing nothing and hoping that it won't all fall apart again.

Even fairly basic zero-trust security is NOT happening with ATS at the moment. The site is old, and insecure, and we could do something about it.

By comparison, both Slashdot and Sourceforge are secure, stable, and open source contributor content sites with long pedigree and millions of users.

a reply to: shaemac

Some of the mods have been here almost from the start. This is our online home, and we’ve put our heart into keeping this place going. I don’t know about the others, but reading some of the stuff that was posted during this really pissed me off. It was like people were coming into our house (by our I mean staff and members) just to piss all over it. I’m thrilled we got it back, and it’s mostly back to normal.