Website Outage
As you’re undoubtedly aware, all of our sites have been down for a couple days and Stonewall Fleet’s website has been down for several weeks. Now that things are back up and working appropriately, I wanted to inform everyone about what happened.
StonewallFleet.com
Way back in 2008, when Stonewall Fleet first started, I knew nothing about web hosting or web development. I was lucky to have a member of the fleet, called Genesis, that knew enough about web sites to get purchase the stonewallfleet.com domain and get our first site, a basic instillation of phpBB, up and running. Sometime after that, I wanted to make our website a bit more advanced, so I learned much more about website development and took over the website, but Genesis still held onto the domain. He’s owned the domain since then and we’ve never had a problem, until recently.
Every year, a small maintenance fee needs to be paid for owning a domain and Genesis has failed to pay that fee. I would happily pay the fee to get the domain restored or take it off his hands completely, but unfortunately but I’ve been unable to contact him by any means since the domain has gone down. Until I’m contacted by Genesis, we have no control over stonewallfleet.com and for that reason the Admirals have opted to use fleet.stonewallgaming.net going forward.
Hacking and Deletion
On the 27th, when opening stonewallvanguard.com to respond to one of my messages I received a warning stating that the website may harm my computer. I immediately went to Google Webmaster Tools to find out what was the cause of the warning. There I was informed that the htaccess file on the website had been compromised. After logging in via FTP and checking out the file, it indeed had been. Several lines had been added to redirect users to spam websites.
I removed the nefarious lines and changed the file permissions so that it couldn’t be edited again. I checked back an hour later and the filed had once again been hacked. I removed the redirects and redouble my effort to figure out how they had gotten in. A few seconds later, I opened the folder containing all of SGN’s websites and it was empty. I can’t quite explain the feeling I had when I saw that in text, but suffice it to say, I was shocked. That folder contained 4 years of SGN’s history and to lose it would be painful for the community. I immediately changed the password to our database and downloaded a backup to my computer to protect it from being lost.
Shortly thereafter, I contacted our host’s Tech Support and requested that they restore a backup of the folder which they were able to, thankfully. I was directed to their Security department for help in figuring out how the hackers gained access and how to prevent it to happen. They helped my greatly and I began the process of restoring the sites.
Now…
It’s been over 24 hours since there was any unauthorized access so I believe we’re in the clear, but I’ll be keeping a very close eye on things.
You may still be receiving the message that this site may harm your computer when you visit; I've requested that the sites be reviewed again and it should clear up in the next day or so.
You may notice that some files or images are missing, that because the backup was from two days before the site went down. You can go ahead and re-upload anything that’s missing. Reply below if you run into any problems.
StonewallFleet.com
Way back in 2008, when Stonewall Fleet first started, I knew nothing about web hosting or web development. I was lucky to have a member of the fleet, called Genesis, that knew enough about web sites to get purchase the stonewallfleet.com domain and get our first site, a basic instillation of phpBB, up and running. Sometime after that, I wanted to make our website a bit more advanced, so I learned much more about website development and took over the website, but Genesis still held onto the domain. He’s owned the domain since then and we’ve never had a problem, until recently.
Every year, a small maintenance fee needs to be paid for owning a domain and Genesis has failed to pay that fee. I would happily pay the fee to get the domain restored or take it off his hands completely, but unfortunately but I’ve been unable to contact him by any means since the domain has gone down. Until I’m contacted by Genesis, we have no control over stonewallfleet.com and for that reason the Admirals have opted to use fleet.stonewallgaming.net going forward.
Hacking and Deletion
On the 27th, when opening stonewallvanguard.com to respond to one of my messages I received a warning stating that the website may harm my computer. I immediately went to Google Webmaster Tools to find out what was the cause of the warning. There I was informed that the htaccess file on the website had been compromised. After logging in via FTP and checking out the file, it indeed had been. Several lines had been added to redirect users to spam websites.
I removed the nefarious lines and changed the file permissions so that it couldn’t be edited again. I checked back an hour later and the filed had once again been hacked. I removed the redirects and redouble my effort to figure out how they had gotten in. A few seconds later, I opened the folder containing all of SGN’s websites and it was empty. I can’t quite explain the feeling I had when I saw that in text, but suffice it to say, I was shocked. That folder contained 4 years of SGN’s history and to lose it would be painful for the community. I immediately changed the password to our database and downloaded a backup to my computer to protect it from being lost.
Shortly thereafter, I contacted our host’s Tech Support and requested that they restore a backup of the folder which they were able to, thankfully. I was directed to their Security department for help in figuring out how the hackers gained access and how to prevent it to happen. They helped my greatly and I began the process of restoring the sites.
Now…
It’s been over 24 hours since there was any unauthorized access so I believe we’re in the clear, but I’ll be keeping a very close eye on things.
You may still be receiving the message that this site may harm your computer when you visit; I've requested that the sites be reviewed again and it should clear up in the next day or so.
You may notice that some files or images are missing, that because the backup was from two days before the site went down. You can go ahead and re-upload anything that’s missing. Reply below if you run into any problems.
