BAD NEWS: Tikiroom.com hacked

Hi all,

I was out of town all last week, and on Wednesday Tikiroom.com was hacked into.

The homepage of the site was changed. Anyone visiting http://www.tikicentral.com got a Hacker's message.

It appears as though this is all the hacker did, although truth be told there's no telling what else the hacker looked at and/or tampered with. Typically though, hackers who want to pry don't deface websites as it tips their hat that they're there.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO YOU:
Tiki Central doesn't really store any important information, although it is possible the Hacker got your email address and your address if you purchased a Grand Membership. But please be aware:

• Passwords on Tiki Central are stored with one-way hackproof encryption. Your password as it is stored was not accessable to the hacker.
• Credit card and paypal information is NOT stored on Tikiroom.com (even if you purchased a Grand Membership).
• Your email address is stored on Tikiroom.com and it's possible the hacker got that. What s/he could do with it is limited to spam, basically.

Let me point out here that at this point it in unknown what the hacker actually did.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME:

I will be looking into new security upgrades this week, and it is possible that Tikiroom.com and Tiki Central will have to go off-line for a day or two in order to change things. I will keep you posted.

Finally I'd like to sum it all up with: AAAAAARRRRRRRRHGGGGGHHHHH!

Mahalo,

Hanford

[ Edited by: hanford_lemoore on 2004-05-10 18:28 ]

Work work work... no rest for the weary. Maybe they were trying to reactivate the shout?

:wink:

Hope they are a one shot fallout of the lunar eclipse...

Anything we can do to help out?

Hello Hanford. I've never had the pleasure to meet you, but I guess, hopefull will. Thanks for maintaining this great venue for people to meet and have fun. I had a question?? What is a "Grandmember" and how could I become one?? Is there a fee involved??

Thanks

On 2004-05-10 17:11, GiantRobotTiki wrote:
I had a question?? What is a "Grandmember" and how could I become one?? Is there a fee involved??

Hi GiantRobotTiki,

Nothing to do with those little blue pills. Here is a link to more info:
https://tikicentral.com/gr.php
:wink:

Hi Hanford,

Thanks for being honest and giving us all the facts. We appreciate your site and effort.

May the tiki gods curse the hackers!

On 2004-05-10 18:15, The Monitors wrote:
Hi Hanford,

Thanks for being honest and giving us all the facts. We appreciate your site and effort.

ditto!

May the tiki gods curse the hackers!

dittox2

[ Edited by: Tiki Bird on 2004-05-11 10:26 ]

More info on this:

I think I have found the security hole the hacker used to hack Tikiroom.com. I have fixed it. Due to other clues I found I believe the hacker was not interested in anything other than "virtual grafitti" defacement of the site, too.

However, this is just the beginning. When a hacker breaks into a site, you can never fully trust the site without a complete rebuild of it, since it is very difficult to tell what backdoors the hacker may have left. So I'm starting that process now.

~Hanford

I bet it was the Bone Head Lady trying turn us into "Dance Mix Central" website. Once again tiki prevails.

Is there some kind of tiki curse we could use to protect the information on the site in the future.

If some hacker removes our email addreses from this sacred website they will suffer a horrible curse until they return what they have taken to some tiki cave where Vincent Price and his friend Oliver live.

On 2004-05-11 10:55, hanford_lemoore wrote:
However, this is just the beginning. When a hacker breaks into a site, you can never fully trust the site without a complete rebuild of it, since it is very difficult to tell what backdoors the hacker may have left. So I'm starting that process now.

I can't imagine that the process will be much fun, Hanford, so thanks for the extra effort you'll be putting into Tiki Central.

There isn't any way of knowing who hacked in, is there? We Tiki Centralites have a long reach....

Trader Woody

Hacking the index page of a site is pretty common. There's a sort of club of hackers who keep score of sites they have done this too. A game. That's all they usually are after. Bigger things are not usually going to occur.

It was probably some weasel from Owl Central.

This may be just a coincedence, but I startted getting spam shortly after this happened.

All the e-mails (3-4 per day) are about credit rescue type stuff. I was wondering if anyone had the same experience? I question it not only because of the timing, but because the e-mail address I have linked to this site has never seen the light of day except for here.

If you are running into the same problem, block "mail.1starnet.com" & "uswest.net". that pretty much stopped the mailings... for now.

Thanks Hanford for being honest and bringing this to our attention.

May the tiki gods curse these hacking bastards with great pleasure.

[ Edited by: MachTiki on 2004-05-20 15:03 ]

actually, the spam I've been getting as a direct result of the hacking, I believe, has been all of the variations of the "I am to being honest for you.....will you to be as so kind to let me put $40,000,000 in bank account of you to be choosing."

harmless( I hope) but stupidly amusing

On 2004-05-22 23:37, suburbanpagan wrote:
actually, the spam I've been getting as a direct result of the hacking, I believe, has been all of the variations of the "I am to being honest for you.....will you to be as so kind to let me put $40,000,000 in bank account of you to be choosing."

harmless( I hope) but stupidly amusing

You might get a kick out of this thread on the Florida Sporstman forums. The guy got a little bored and decided to correspond with these spammers. His correspondence with the Nigerian scammer is pretty hilarious.

http://outdoorsbest.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=200606&page=1

OMG!! That some of the funniest stuff I've read in awhile!

On 2004-05-23 11:20, DawnTiki wrote:
OMG!! That some of the funniest stuff I've read in awhile!

Yeah, my favorite part is: "Ben, I am your father!"

For those who haven't read it: The forum member responds to a Nigerian email scammer as an 87yo shrimp boat captain, Captain Chester McGillicuddy. He sends him photoshopped pics of himself. The Nigerian (Ben Savimbi) starts talking about how Chester is like a father to him. Chester twists this around to the point that he is Ben's real father because he spent some time in Africa (sends him a pic of Tarzan) and had many lovers. He gets the scammer to send pics of himself (apparently this is an internet sport http://www.419eater.com/ ). It'll take a while to read the whole thread but it's worth it IMO.

I was going to buy a bottle of Voodoo rum at the red Rum website, and apparently they have just been hacked(Warning, explicit language).
http://www.redrum.com/

On 2004-05-27 12:54, Unga Bunga wrote:
I was going to buy a bottle of Voodoo rum at the red Rum website, and apparently they have just been hacked(Warning, explicit language).
http://www.redrum.com/

I'm not quite sure what to say except thanks for the warning.

That's some serious hacking... "TV is Spam","We are all gods","Don't vote"? deeeep.

MachTiki