Some funny stuff happening on FICS right now. Someone hacked the head admin's account, banned all the other admins, etc. FICS just got shut down forcefully, I think. Thought I would start a thread so people could get news about the events and what's going on. I will post what I know when I know something, too.
Hello Gorgonian, been a while I haven't been here (I'm VojFromMars on FICS)
kardolus behaviour seemed very strange to me and I suspected a hack too (though my account hasn't been hacked or banned ; I'm just a TM/SR..)
What informations are you sure about ?
Regards,
Chessty's account was hacked (someone got her password, somehow) and was used to ban all admin accounts. I do know the admins were not really sure what to do except go to the server site and manually shut it down before any real damage could be done. I'm pretty sure that's what happened.
I had the honor of being banned before the server was shut down, because I tried to tell kardolus that Chessty's account had been hacked.
Completely shutting down the server was the best thing that could have happened under the circumstances. Having the head admin account compromised is a worst-case scenario. Even assuming that the admins made timely, reliable backups it could be a while before service is restored.
Btw, you should never reuse a password from FICS on other sites. Be careful out there!
naomi here
17 years member. never ever saw anything like that. Must be someone who was banned or is just a hacker. Please post anything here regarding to a possible remedy for this here
David
ftp.freechess.org is currently unaffected, and I downloaded the historical FICS 1.6 and 1.7 code and I'm currently trying to modify the SunOS glibc Makefile for a modern linux.
ftp.freechess.org is currently unaffected, and I downloaded the historical FICS 1.6 and 1.7 code and I'm currently trying to modify the SunOS glibc Makefile for a modern linux.
The People's FICS is coming!
Unfortunately that code is rather out of date compared to the current FICS. There are a few projects to make a more modern version, but nothing that can replace FICS yet, I'm afraid.
Hi, I'm FICS admin toddmf. We have recent backups. It is possible that no data will be lost at all, but we may have to revert to a backup from a few days ago.
At this time it is not clear when the server will be back up.
Head-admin account hacked is a worst-case scenario indeed ; I guess kardolus was compromised too ?
Do you think hackers could have accessed to everyone passwords ?
This is highly unlikely. The passwords are stored encrypted. There is an admin command to change someone's password (which is likely how they got into kardolus's account after using Chessty's), but there is no way to view someone's current password.
I'll post here again if we uncover any evidence that anyone's password (besides Chessty's) was discovered.
Hi everyone!
If its a matter of money to get our beloved fics back to order, I am willing to help. It seems that very few people know about this thread that gorgonian started. Any news?? ((
David
As I mentioned before, I suspect it will be down for a while. According to ficsgames.org, however, "A temporary copy of FICS is available at fics2.freechess.org port 23. Any activity (rating changes etc) will NOT be transferred back to FICS once it is online again."
Last edited by wmahan; 07-19-2013 at 09:21 AM.
Reason: typo
It's a shame this is happening. When I first learned how the pieces moved, I began to play on FICS and was active over there quite a bit for about 3-4 years. It really is a great free place to play.
