Site Hacked - Being restored

Troubleshooting
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srkris
Site Admin
Posts: 3497
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 03:34

Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by srkris »

Hi All,

The site was hacked approximately at 3 AM this morning and is now being restored, it is functional but some of the additional features may be missing. They are being restored.

Please check the blog http://rasikas.tumblr.com/post/71280256 ... -data-lost or this page for updates.

thanjavooran
Posts: 2972
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 04:44

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by thanjavooran »

Thank God! Restored with least damage. Is it because of the recent coverage in the Hindu ? G O K !
Thanjavooran
27 12 2013

mohan7narayanan
Posts: 21
Joined: 23 Dec 2013, 22:19

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by mohan7narayanan »

Am not surprised....there are lots of people who do not want to see other people's criticsm/not so positive reviews of their favourite musicians!

venkatakailasam
Posts: 4170
Joined: 07 Feb 2010, 19:16

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by venkatakailasam »

Thank God..At 8AM today I wanted to post A concert a day..any time..I could not open ..I that there is some network problem....

It is hacking!!

Thank you for restoring..

parivadini
Posts: 1190
Joined: 22 Oct 2013, 22:44

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by parivadini »

Today's live webcast from Parivadini concert:

Concert 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNlYXIJYcBM

04.00pm: Anirudh Venkatesh, Shraddha Raveendran, L.Subramanian

concert 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zepTcxi6d8

06.30pm: Veenai parthasarathy(Veena), madipakkam Suresh, Rajaram

PADARA
Posts: 1
Joined: 28 Dec 2010, 14:24

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by PADARA »

It is deeply regrettable that someone thought fit to hack this site, which does not do any harm to anybody excepting encouraging freedom of expression. However, it is heartening to note that it is being restored. It is to be hoped that there would not be any more attempts to scuttle freedom of expression.
At the same time, all must ensure that the forum is used for the welfare music and arts. Let us not do deride any individual/s beyond decent limits.
R.Radhakrishnan

Nick H
Posts: 9379
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 02:03

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by Nick H »

Astonishing.

Anyone going to hack a website because someone is rude about a musician? I just don't believe that!

Wait on the news from skris...

Rsachi
Posts: 5039
Joined: 31 Aug 2009, 13:54

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by Rsachi »

Dear Ramakrishnan
Thank you for all your timely corrective efforts at restoring the site.
You can't believe how incapacitated I felt meanwhile!

But hacking?!? I wonder. I imagine rasikas.org is too big a force for anyone to think of hacking now.

however, please get a 3rd party audit/investigation, we can all share in the costs, is there some kind of insurance one can take!?
If any preventive measures can be implemented, that would be good too.. (Like several mirrors...!?)

srkris
Site Admin
Posts: 3497
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 03:34

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by srkris »

The site does not need to be big or even commercial, to get hacked; there are viruses and worms out there on the internet that can sabotage a website without any specific reason, sometimes just to test if the exploit works.

I am not sure if there is anything other than good defenses can help. I do take periodic (not daily though) backups of the database.

rajeshnat
Posts: 9906
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by rajeshnat »

srkris
I am away from chennai for about 5 days till sunday afternoon. If you require any kind of setup like server hardening , making it as https etc those things which makes it better do let me know , i can help with a small set of guys who are more knowledgeable than me. Do reach me out in mail or phone and I will help you post sunday afternoon

VijayR
Posts: 198
Joined: 13 Jul 2011, 21:59

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by VijayR »

Quote RSachi: "But hacking?!? I wonder. I imagine rasikas.org is too big a force for anyone to think of hacking now."

I hope to God you are joking or being sarcastic…

I am willing to bet that the hackers had no clue about Carnatic Music, let alone have favorite carnatic musicians. There are many people around the world who, just for fun and a twisted sense of accomplishment, probe websites at random and take them down using known exploits. They couldn't care less about what website it is…

Thanks to Srkris for his time/effort in restoring the site. SRKris, perhaps it is time to think of automated, daily DB backups (combined with periodic code backups). I'm guessing Network Solutions (are they our host?) provides this feature at an additional cost...

mahavishnu
Posts: 3341
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 21:56

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by mahavishnu »

I am willing to bet that the hackers had no clue about Carnatic Music, let alone have favorite carnatic musicians. There are many people around the world who, just for fun and a twisted sense of accomplishment, probe websites at random and take them down using known exploits. They couldn't care less about what website it is…
I completely agree. People hack websites for mischief and this has nothing to do with content.
Srkris, thanks so much for all your efforts. We owe it all to you.

rshankar
Posts: 13754
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 22:26

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by rshankar »

Thank you, Chembai....
I agree with VijayR's suggestions.

VK RAMAN
Posts: 5009
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:29

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by VK RAMAN »

"just for fun and a twisted sense of accomplishment" - This is the truth. Many among our age group are typists knowing nothing about coding, etc and I am one among them. Ramakrishnan, if there is anything we can do, please ask.

vs_manjunath
Posts: 1466
Joined: 29 Sep 2006, 19:37

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by vs_manjunath »

srkris_ Thanks for your efforts in restoring the Site.All of us were totally crippled without the access to the site. We are all addicted to rasikas.org !!!

To keep the business going: Neyveli Santhana Gopalan gave an excellent Jaya TV -MMU concert yesterday evening.
Ragas Huseni;Prathapavarali; Jingla were the highlights.
Details will follow.

Ramasubramanian M.K
Posts: 1226
Joined: 05 May 2009, 08:33

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by Ramasubramanian M.K »

Thanks Ramakrishnan for your herculean efforts to keep this site open. We allowe a deep debt of gratitude for your yeoman service. Being a Technical luddite myself is there anything we the posters should be careful aout(either revealing our e-mail id's in the threads or other habitual practices that may open the dors for hacking. Please educate us--afterall the network is as strong as the weakest link!!

vasanthakokilam
Posts: 10956
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 00:01

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by vasanthakokilam »

is there anything we the posters should be careful about(either revealing our e-mail id's in the threads or other habitual practices that may open the doors for hacking. Please educate us.
Good point MKR. There are indeed such best practices that one needs to be aware of, not just in this forum but online in general.

It is not necessarily about this site getting hacked but more a personal security best practices in terms of what personal info to share on line and few things one needs to be aware of before clicking on a link etc. The first part is pretty serious stuff and possibly deserves its own thread. The second part typically applies to links that someone sends by email ( even in emails that are supposedly from someone you know very well ) but even in this forum, it is prudent to do that when a new user posts a link. And there are more that our knowledgeable members would like to share.

I will open a separate topic for this.

Rsachi
Posts: 5039
Joined: 31 Aug 2009, 13:54

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by Rsachi »

VijayR,
I fully agree hacking can be an act of random vandalism. I was not being simplistic - I smelled a suggestion that we were hacked for our views.

How are we sure it was hacking and not a system breakdown? Please educate me.

I do think the bigger and busier forums have robust redundancy design and more monitoring and back-up and diagnostics etc. entailing expense and maybe redesign. Ramakrishnan will know what to do I am sure.

I found a similar error message for some time on 28 AM IST also as at first two days back.

parivadini
Posts: 1190
Joined: 22 Oct 2013, 22:44

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by parivadini »

Today's Live Webcast From Naada Inbam:

Session 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTIpG9wrmnY

10.00am: K.Bharat Sundar, V.Sanjeev, Trivandrum Balaji, Chandrasekara Sharma

srkris
Site Admin
Posts: 3497
Joined: 02 Feb 2010, 03:34

Re: Site Hacked - Being restored

Post by srkris »

Thanks everyone for your understanding. I am travelling back to my place (UK) from Chennai in the next couple of days hence might not be able to work on the site immediately.

This is a hack (not a system failure) since I found malicious code on the website, not in one file but in many files.

It will take a few days to restore all the functions as before (post numbers, similar topics, etc etc), thanks in advance for your patience.

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