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gEtPiErced	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#161	[-]
Posts: 28 (06/04/05 04:51:16) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I get what Otown lover girl gets but ONLY when i try to post in the Dan thread!!! its so annoying cause dan is my favourite!!!!
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#162	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/04/05 06:27:12) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	sigh There were hacks into Ezboard last week.. they are working on restoring things, but not really sure what they will be able to do, and by when.
MAGMikala524	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#163	[-]
Posts: 4947 (06/04/05 07:58:38) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I've noticed some threads have disappeared including in the Non-O-Town Photos section and some posts in threads seem to have disappeared as well.
IO Debbie	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#164	[-]
Posts: 5704 (06/04/05 14:59:18) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Yeah, apparently it was pretty bad. Here is the latest update from EZBoard: *Quote:* Dear ezboard Family, Good morning and thank you for your patience as we continue to restore your data and return our systems to normal operation. This will be a long update, as I want to be as thorough as possible and incorporate threads from the many phone calls and e-mail discussions I have had with ezOps, admins and users in the last few days. I hope that by being open and explicit we can give you a better understanding of what has happened, where we are in the restoration process, and when we can all expect to get back to normal. I've broken all this information into topic areas to make it easier for you to find the topic that you personally care about the most. When will my board get its data back? The most difficult and painful thing for me to report is that it will be impossible to restore full data on all boards. We will send out a Global Announcement once all possible restoration procedures have been completed. During this process, you can expect to see some slowness on the boards, but well return to normal speeds as soon as the restoration is complete. I realize this creates great uncertainty for many of you still waiting for data restoration, and so I want to give you the following, much more detailed description of the data restoration process we are undertaking in our efforts to get the most back we can, on the fastest time frame possible: Data restoration began the day of the attack with the restoration of eight servers that we could salvage immediately. Sadly, no other intervention was successful at that time. Since that time, we have been assembling data from three sources: the remaining historical backups of some 8,000 Gold and trial boards from early May, the current data recently written to hard drives since the attack, and data in RAM memory since the attack. The actual restorations using this assembled data have been underway since Thursday afternoon, and are being done on a server-by-server basis. The process is automated and each server takes approximately 6 hours to restore. We can restore between 8 and 10 servers in parallel. To some of you this may seem like a long time to restore data on a single server. And it is. However, we are using an innovative process to maximize the data recovery and testing it thoroughly to make sure that (a) we don't erase the posts that have been made since the attack and (b) the data is being properly restored. When this server-by-server process is complete, we have one final source of data that we may be able to use for restoration. With quick thinking and fast action on the part of your technical team we were able to do an emergency backup of active data. To be clear, this is by no means all the board post data, only the active data at that time. We will be restoring this data as a last step in the process. We are working as fast as possible on the restoration process - believe me, the faster this is completed the happier we all will be. What happened in the attack? What we know is that late in the evening on the holiday Monday, May 30 here in the US, a person with significant and specific information attacked our systems. The attacker was successful in erasing historical board posts and the backup systems, which were password protected and on a separate network. They did not erase the posts of boards that were active on the system at the time. What more can you tell me about the back-ups? The issue was not the back-up systems themselves. Our back-up systems have been working well and are separate from our production environment. They are not accessible without inside technical information and passwords. The issue was that either through luck or (more likely) specific information, the attacker was able to delete both the historical files and the back-ups. What are you doing so this doesnt happen again? We have put additional safeguards in place to reduce the opportunity for this to happen in the future. We will also be undertaking a highly detailed security and back-up audit in the coming weeks. You should also know that we have been Alpha testing the new community software for three weeks and in addition to increased security, redundancy and back-up systems, it will have the ability to allow ezOps to back-up their communities (in addition to daily and weekly incremental backups) to their home computers in an automated fashion. For some ezOps this should provide an additional level of safety and peace of mind. Can't you give us more frequent updates? We have been updating you as soon as there is new information. Since the attack we have put out five global messages and have had two conference calls with ezOps and admins. In addition, the Customer Service help desk and Support Forums have been very active. On a more personal basis, Steve DeMello and I have been responding to hundreds of e-mails from users, ezOps and admins. As of 7AM PST on Friday we have responded to every e-mail that has been sent directly to the two of us. If you are looking for ways to get up to date information fast I recommend reading p079.ezboard.com/fezboard...ouncements first. Please read the materials already available before contacting CS -- the response queues are pretty full, as you might imagine. What can you tell us about the attacker? I can tell you that we have suspects, we have evidence and we are working with the FBI. I can also tell you that we will be working to have the attacker punished to the full extent of the law. While we do have evidence, we can always use more, good, factual evidence. We are offering a $5,000 reward to the person or persons that provide us with factual information that leads to the direct arrest and conviction of the attacker. We are not interested in conspiracy theories, finger pointing or childish pranks. We are interested in information such as community postings or blog entries where the attacker is bragging about the attack and other factual, real information. Please e-mail information to legal@ezboard.com. When you e-mail please provide a link to the original material AND a screen capture of the original material or at the very least, copy and paste the original material into your e-mail. Please be smart, ethical, law abiding and honest about the way you find the information your provide to us. Now the fine print: A reward will be paid to the person or persons that deliver to legal@ezboard.com information that leads to the direct arrest and conviction of the person or persons that attacked ezboard.com earlier this week. Should more than one person provide identical or substantially similar information that is used for the arrest and conviction of the attacker, the reward will be split equitably amongst the providers of that information. Will you be providing Credits for Gold Boards? Yes we plan to provide credits. We need to understand the scope of the data restoration before we decide on the amount of the credit. I would anticipate further news on credits to be available in the next week. What happened to my Community Chest Balance? The Community Chest balances were deleted as well, but we do have a back up of that data from a few days before the attack. We need to recalculate the actual Community Chest balances by taking the balance as of the date of the backup, adding Community Chest contributions and subtracting payments from Community Chest. We hope you agree that restoring Community Chest data is a second priority to getting the board posts restored Please don't worry about your Community Chest balance, it will be restored and updated. So, where do we go from here? First let me say that we at ezboard are deeply sorry about the attack this week. The person that did this to us probably had a great chuckle when they pressed the send key to initiate the attack. Little did they know that they would affect so many lives in so many ways. I have heard from cancer patients, historians, mothers and schoolteachers about the way that their boards were damaged and were of vital importance to them. What the attacker did was take a great big piece of many peoples lives including the folks here at ezboard. For that, I hope we catch the attacker and return the favor by taking a bit of their time - behind bars. We are working to restore the boards as fast as we can. We know your trust in ezboard has been deeply shaken. Now we are trying to rebuild that trust, and are realistic that this will be difficult and take time. We plan to keep messaging you on our progress. Some of you may have already seen data restored as we started the process on Thursday. Please check p079.ezboard.com/fezboard...ouncements for updates. In closing, we are working to get systems back to normal and believe that they will be back soon. We are fixing the security and backup processes now and will be performing a security and back-up audit in the coming weeks. Thank you for being an ezboard user, and for reading this, and we hope that you will continue to use ezboard. Lets put our communities and our network back together, and bring the attacker to justice. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. We're not alone and they've asked us to be patient while they do what they can to restore as much as they can, but it appear that some information may not be recovered. All we can do is sit tight and hope.
canadalovesotown	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#165	[-]
Posts: 2906 (06/04/05 19:07:11) Backstage Passholder Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	$:\$ Wow. I can't believe someone would do that! I'm glad it's not my computer, though. Shrugs I'm sure they will do their best. ~Love, Lindsay~
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#166	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/06/05 12:15:04) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Here's the latest message: *Quote:* ezboard Attack Update - 06/06/05 Dear ezboard Family, Hello on Monday and thank you for your patience as we continue to restore your data and return our systems to normal operation. We are taking stock of all aspects of the attack and restore processes this morning and we have a board of directors meeting this afternoon to discuss the attack, the restoration process and our next steps. Your ezboard team is working to get data back and to fix the posting/thread issues that some boards have reported. We will provide a comprehensive update before the end of our business day here in San Francisco. Thank you again for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. robertlabatt@ezboard.com
otownlovergurl9	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#167	[-]
Posts: 2908 (06/08/05 02:52:43) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Thanks for the update! I hope it gets better. *Quote:* I get what Otown lover girl gets but ONLY when i try to post in the Dan thread!!! The only reason I posted was because I wasn't sure what was going on. I thought it was my problem, so I was ready to ask about it in the thread, but I could see the message above mine the one I posted.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#168	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/08/05 04:55:29) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	The latest updates: *Quote:* Posted: 6/7/05 14:11 ezboard Attack Update - 06/07/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear ezboard Family, Let me start todays update by telling you that the information published yesterday evening remains accurate for quick reference, I have attached the Q&A from yesterday to this message. Based on your emails, and questions to staff and in the Help Forums, Id like to address five additional questions today. The answer to the first two questions is the same. The questions are: Will new forums made since the attack, and new topics made in those forums, be affected by the restoral process? Will new boards created since the attack be affected by either the attack or the restoral process? Based on everything we know at this time, we believe that these boards, forums and topics will not be affected by the restoral process. However, we continue to test these issues, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer to one or both of these questions may change. Can we start posting in our old forums again? Based on everything we know at this point, we believe that it is safe to post in forums created before the attack again. However, we continue to test, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer may change. What is the status of restoring Community Chest balances and data? We will be working on the Community Chest restoral once we have freed up staff from the board restoral, security and back-up improvements. Will non-Gold Communities be restored? Non-Gold Communities are not routinely backed up. However, we have data from about 4,000 Non-Gold Communities and we may be able to restore additional Non-Gold Communities from RAM. No promises, but we are trying everything. Thank you again for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. robertlabatt@ezboard.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q&A FROM YESTERDAY EVENING: How many servers have been restored? At this point there is no such thing as a completely restored server. Let me give you some background to put this in perspective. We have gone back into terabytes of non-back-up data looking for any board data we can find. Where possible weve put this data in the restore queue. When we learned of the hack we also dumped the contents of RAM from each server onto a hard drive. We have been restoring that data as well. With the main mode of data restoration gone (the regular back-ups) we have had to create new restoration processes from scratch. That means writing software, testing it and then putting it into production - all on no sleep. In some cases working slower IS safer - but more frustrating for you and for us. At this time we are restoring from five different data sources. Each source requires a separate step or process to restore data. Roughly half the servers have finished the first step of restoration and are in the second step of what are ultimately five steps of restoration. No severs will be fully restored until they have passed through all five steps. We cannot give you specifics of what servers/boards are where in the process and we cannot have your board opt out of the restore processes. Why am I still losing threads that were on my board after the attack? We have isolated the problem and fixed three issues that were leading to thread loss. These fixes have been applied to all servers and you should not be seeing additional losses after today. Thank you to the over 500 people who submitted information on this problem. We do not need additional information at this time, but if we get new reports of new data loss after tonight we may ask you for more information. Why am I getting request errors on my board? We have identified twelve variations of this error. We believe it will be resolved as part of the restoration process. Thanks to the hundreds of people who submitted bug reports on this error already. Should you still be experiencing this bug after the restorals are complete, we will ask for more information at that time. What is happening to Gold Community subscriptions that have expired since the attack, or will expire soon? We are currently identifying every Gold Community whose subscription has expired on 5/31 or later and will be reinstating or extending subscription services through at least the next two weeks. This will take a few days to complete. In the meantime, you do not need to let us know your board is expiring. Why is it taking so long? Believe me, we are not dragging this out for fun. We are working carefully to ensure that we dont lose more data. That means double and triple checking what we are doing. For example, we dont want to overwrite new posts in a forum when we restore that forum. So, we need to perform tests to ensure that does not happen. This caution takes time, but reduces the chance that we lose data that can be restored. How successful are the restorations? We dont know yet. The data that is restored will not be evenly distributed across all boards. Some boards will get all their data restored and some will not get any data back. We will not know exactly which boards will get all, some or none of their data back until the five restoration phases are completed on all servers/boards. We would love to send you a list of which boards are getting what data restored, but it is not information that can be generated at this time. What dont we know at this point? We dont know how long the five phased recovery process will take. Different servers restore at different rates and there is no pattern to the time it takes. We dont know if we will find more data that can be restored. But we are looking for it. What are you doing to make sure this does not happen again? We are changing your back-up processes and we are improving security. For security reasons what specifically we are doing is not something we will share in a public forum. Why are board web pages loading slowly? The restore process is taking computing power from serving web pages. Web page delivery speeds will return to normal when the restoration process is completed. Can I e-mail you with questions? Yes, I have been responding to every e-mail I have received. Sometime it takes a few hours, but I am responding as fast as possible. Please understand that the global announcements have the most up to date information. We cannot provide any information or special restores for specific boards or servers.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#169	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/09/05 06:33:28) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Today's Update: *Quote:* ezboard Attack Update - 06/08/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear ezboard Family, Let me start todays update by telling you that the information published yesterday remains accurate for quick reference, I have attached yesterdays update to the bottom of this message. Based on your emails, and questions to staff and in the Help Forums, Id like to address three additional questions today. Should I contact you with my questions on payment, account issues etcetera? No. Please direct questions on those topics and questions you would normally send to CS to helpdesk.ezboard.com Please do not e-mail me directly with these issues, as I will forward you on to the CS team. You will not experience a faster response from CS as a result of my being involved. Can I resume normal activities like posting and reading on my boards? Yes, you may resume normal posting at the majority of boards. We are aware of the issues (i.e., request errors) that are affecting approximately 1% of boards and are working to repair them. If you are experiencing problems that are new in the last 24 hours and have not been reported or seen before, please post a bug report at p079.ezboard.com/fbugsfrm177 Ive been told of a way that I can restore my own topics, should I do it? Yes and No. Many topics have been restored, but do not appear on the topic listing page. It is not harmful to reply to these topics, but we have implemented a way to automate the restoration of topic titles. If your question is not answered above please continue to carefully read the balance of this update. Should your question still not be answered after reading this update and you dont think that our customer service team or help forums can answer your question then please feel free to e-mail me at the address below. Thank you again for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. robertlabatt@ezboard.com Q&A FROM YESTERDAY: The answer to the first two questions is the same. The questions are: Will new forums made since the attack, and new topics made in those forums, be affected by the restoral process? Will new boards created since the attack be affected by either the attack or the restoral process? Based on everything we know at this time, we believe that these boards, forums and topics will not be affected by the restoral process. However, we continue to test these issues, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer to one or both of these questions may change. Can we start posting in our old forums again? Based on everything we know at this point, we believe that it is safe to post in forums created before the attack again. However, we continue to test, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer may change. What is the status of restoring Community Chest balances and data? We will be working on the Community Chest restoral once we have freed up staff from the board restoral, security and back-up improvements. Will non-Gold Communities be restored? Non-Gold Communities are not routinely backed up. However, we have data from about 4,000 Non-Gold Communities and we may be able to restore additional Non-Gold Communities from RAM. No promises, but we are trying everything. How many servers have been restored? At this point there is no such thing as a completely restored server. Let me give you some background to put this in perspective. We have gone back into terabytes of non-back-up data looking for any board data we can find. Where possible weve put this data in the restore queue. When we learned of the hack we also dumped the contents of RAM from each server onto a hard drive. We have been restoring that data as well. With the main mode of data restoration gone (the regular back-ups) we have had to create new restoration processes from scratch. That means writing software, testing it and then putting it into production - all on no sleep. In some cases working slower IS safer - but more frustrating for you and for us. At this time we are restoring from five different data sources. Each source requires a separate step or process to restore data. Roughly half the servers have finished the first step of restoration and are in the second step of what are ultimately five steps of restoration. No severs will be fully restored until they have passed through all five steps. We cannot give you specifics of what servers/boards are where in the process and we cannot have your board opt out of the restore processes. Why am I still losing threads that were on my board after the attack? We have isolated the problem and fixed three issues that were leading to thread loss. These fixes have been applied to all servers and you should not be seeing additional losses after today. Thank you to the over 500 people who submitted information on this problem. We do not need additional information at this time, but if we get new reports of new data loss after tonight we may ask you for more information. Why am I getting request errors on my board? We have identified twelve variations of this error. We believe it will be resolved as part of the restoration process. Thanks to the hundreds of people who submitted bug reports on this error already. Should you still be experiencing this bug after the restorals are complete, we will ask for more information at that time. What is happening to Gold Community subscriptions that have expired since the attack, or will expire soon? We are currently identifying every Gold Community whose subscription has expired on 5/31 or later and will be reinstating or extending subscription services through at least the next two weeks. This will take a few days to complete. In the meantime, you do not need to let us know your board is expiring. Why is it taking so long? Believe me, we are not dragging this out for fun. We are working carefully to ensure that we dont lose more data. That means double and triple checking what we are doing. For example, we dont want to overwrite new posts in a forum when we restore that forum. So, we need to perform tests to ensure that does not happen. This caution takes time, but reduces the chance that we lose data that can be restored. How successful are the restorations? We dont know yet. The data that is restored will not be evenly distributed across all boards. Some boards will get all their data restored and some will not get any data back. We will not know exactly which boards will get all, some or none of their data back until the five restoration phases are completed on all servers/boards. We would love to send you a list of which boards are getting what data restored, but it is not information that can be generated at this time. What dont we know at this point? We dont know how long the five phased recovery process will take. Different servers restore at different rates and there is no pattern to the time it takes. We dont know if we will find more data that can be restored. But we are looking for it. What are you doing to make sure this does not happen again? We are changing your back-up processes and we are improving security. For security reasons what specifically we are doing is not something we will share in a public forum. Why are board web pages loading slowly? The restore process is taking computing power from serving web pages. Web page delivery speeds will return to normal when the restoration process is completed. Can I e-mail you with questions? Yes, I have been responding to every e-mail I have received. Sometime it takes a few hours, but I am responding as fast as possible. Please understand that the global announcements have the most up to date information. We cannot provide any information or special restores for specific boards or servers.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#170	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/10/05 04:11:13) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	June 9th Update: *Quote:* Posted: 6/9/05 13:00 ezboard Attack Update - 06/09/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited to add one additional Q&A Dear ezboard Family, Let me start todays update by telling you that the information published yesterday remains accurate for quick reference, I have attached the Q&A from previous days update to the bottom of this message. Based on your emails, and questions to staff and in the Help Forums, Id like to address the two most frequently asked questions: What is the status and timing of the restoral process? Im pleased to announce that almost all servers have completed the first three steps of the restoral process, and we plan to start the final two steps on a server-by-server basis later today. Based on our testing, we expect boards that were active at the time of the attack to see a significant amount of data restored during these final two steps. We anticipate that the final two restoral steps will take a total of seven to ten days to be completed. Individual servers will be restored throughout that time. This means that you will see your board/server restoral sometime within that period. We are in the process of acquiring additional servers in an effort to accelerate this process. Please be aware that the final steps are the most computer power intensive, and you will notice at least moderate slowness on your server when it is being restored. We will not respond to requests to have your server restored first, and cannot restore an individual board on a server. When you said we expect boards that were active at the time of the attack to see a significant amount of data restored during these final two steps, what did you mean by active at the time of the attack? Active at the time of the attack means that members were actively posting and reading. While we cannot determine how much data will be retrieved for a given level of posting and reading activity, we can tell you that the more active a board was (therefore more of its data was in RAM) the more data will likely be restored. The flip side of this is that an archive board that was not active at that time would not have much or any data in RAM and therefore would likely not be as likely to have data restored. Gold Community subscriptions are expiring what are you planning to do about this? We have completed, and are in final testing of, code that will freeze all subscriptions. Assuming a successful final test, we will deploy the code today. We have also established a list of all Gold Communities that have expired since the attack, and are developing a process to restore subscription benefits to those boards. If your question is not answered above please continue to carefully read the balance of this update. Should your question still not be answered after reading this update and you dont think that our customer service team or help forums can answer your question then please feel free to e-mail me at the address below. Thank you again for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. robertlabatt@ezboard.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q&A FROM PREVIOUS DAYS: Should I contact you with my questions on payment, account issues etcetera? No. Please direct questions on those topics and questions you would normally send to CS to helpdesk.ezboard.com/?_a=...p=payments Can I resume normal activities like posting and reading on my boards? Yes. We are aware of the issues that are affecting approximately 1% of boards and are working to repair them. If you are experiencing problems that are new in the last 24 hours and have not been reported or seen before. Please do not e-mail me directly with these issues, as I will forward you on to the CS team. You will not experience a faster response from CS as a result of my being involved. Ive been told of a way that I can restore my own topic titles, should I do it? Yes and No. It is not harmful for you to be doing this, but we have implemented a way to automate the restoration of topic titles. The answer to the first two questions is the same. The questions are: Will new forums made since the attack, and new topics made in those forums, be affected by the restoral process? Will new boards created since the attack be affected by either the attack or the restoral process? Based on everything we know at this time, we believe that these boards, forums and topics will not be affected by the restoral process. However, we continue to test these issues, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer to one or both of these questions may change. Can we start posting in our old forums again? Based on everything we know at this point, we believe that it is safe to post in forums created before the attack again. However, we continue to test, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer may change. What is the status of restoring Community Chest balances and data? We will be working on the Community Chest restoral once we have freed up staff from the board restoral, security and back-up improvements. Will non-Gold Communities be restored? Non-Gold Communities are not routinely backed up. However, we have data from about 4,000 Non-Gold Communities and we may be able to restore additional Non-Gold Communities from RAM. No promises, but we are trying everything. How many servers have been restored? At this point there is no such thing as a completely restored server. Let me give you some background to put this in perspective. We have gone back into terabytes of non-back-up data looking for any board data we can find. Where possible weve put this data in the restore queue. When we learned of the hack we also dumped the contents of RAM from each server onto a hard drive. We have been restoring that data as well. With the main mode of data restoration gone (the regular back-ups) we have had to create new restoration processes from scratch. That means writing software, testing it and then putting it into production - all on no sleep. In some cases working slower IS safer - but more frustrating for you and for us. At this time we are restoring from five different data sources. Each source requires a separate step or process to restore data. Roughly half the servers have finished the first step of restoration and are in the second step of what are ultimately five steps of restoration. No severs will be fully restored until they have passed through all five steps. We cannot give you specifics of what servers/boards are where in the process and we cannot have your board opt out of the restore processes. Why am I still losing threads that were on my board after the attack? We have isolated the problem and fixed three issues that were leading to thread loss. These fixes have been applied to all servers and you should not be seeing additional losses after today. Thank you to the over 500 people who submitted information on this problem. We do not need additional information at this time, but if we get new reports of new data loss after tonight we may ask you for more information. Why am I getting request errors on my board? We have identified twelve variations of this error. We believe it will be resolved as part of the restoration process. Thanks to the hundreds of people who submitted bug reports on this error already. Should you still be experiencing this bug after the restorals are complete, we will ask for more information at that time. What is happening to Gold Community subscriptions that have expired since the attack, or will expire soon? We are currently identifying every Gold Community whose subscription has expired on 5/31 or later and will be reinstating or extending subscription services through at least the next two weeks. This will take a few days to complete. In the meantime, you do not need to let us know your board is expiring. Why is it taking so long? Believe me, we are not dragging this out for fun. We are working carefully to ensure that we dont lose more data. That means double and triple checking what we are doing. For example, we dont want to overwrite new posts in a forum when we restore that forum. So, we need to perform tests to ensure that does not happen. This caution takes time, but reduces the chance that we lose data that can be restored. How successful are the restorations? We dont know yet. The data that is restored will not be evenly distributed across all boards. Some boards will get all their data restored and some will not get any data back. We will not know exactly which boards will get all, some or none of their data back until the five restoration phases are completed on all servers/boards. We would love to send you a list of which boards are getting what data restored, but it is not information that can be generated at this time. What dont we know at this point? We dont know how long the five phased recovery process will take. Different servers restore at different rates and there is no pattern to the time it takes. We dont know if we will find more data that can be restored. But we are looking for it. What are you doing to make sure this does not happen again? We are changing your back-up processes and we are improving security. For security reasons what specifically we are doing is not something we will share in a public forum. Why are board web pages loading slowly? The restore process is taking computing power from serving web pages. Web page delivery speeds will return to normal when the restoration process is completed. Can I e-mail you with questions? Yes, I have been responding to every e-mail I have received. Sometime it takes a few hours, but I am responding as fast as possible. Please understand that the global announcements have the most up to date information. We cannot provide any information or special restores for specific boards or servers.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#171	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/15/05 04:57:01) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	The lastest: Posted: 6/14/05 13:10 ezboard Attack Update - 06/14/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear ezboard Family, The good news is that we have nothing new to report today the final two steps of the restoral process are happening across the network, and we expect to be on schedule for completion over the weekend. It is important to understand that at this point there is no such thing as a completely restored server even the servers farthest along in the process require some additional work. On a related subject, we are continuing to work on recovering p087 data from this weekends hard drive problem. For quick reference, I have attached the Q&A from previous days update to the bottom of this message. If you have additional questions please continue to carefully read the balance of this update. Should your question still not be answered after reading this update and you dont think that our customer service team or help forums can answer your question then please feel free to e-mail me at the address below. I remain available for and welcome your emails. However, please do not write to me as a way of circumventing the normal CS process, or to request information specific to the status of your board. I will be referring all normal CS requests to the appropriate forum or queue, and cannot provide information on the status of specific boards and servers. Thank you again for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. robertlabatt@ezboard.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Q&A FROM PREVIOUS DAYS: My Gold Community subscription expiration date is not being extended as it was announced it would last week whats happening? We are in the process of taking three steps to resolve the major board subscription issues. Those steps are: re-establishing Gold status for communities whose subscription expired since the attack, correcting subscription terms for communities that renewed since the release of the code (last Thursday), and globally extending all Gold Community subscriptions. Im experiencing problems with my server is this related to the attack? We have been responding to reports of server failure over the weekend, most notably p087. The problems on p087 were a result of hardware failure, and were in no way related to the attack. Our technical team has brought p087 back online, and is working to restore data. Why are you cutting and pasting material from update to update? You should know that, if there are no changes and we are progressing as planned and as indicated the day before, then there is nothing to update other than we are on track. We do provide changed updates when there are changes from the plans that we messaged to you in a previous message. In a way, a cut and paste update is good news. What is the status and timing of the restoral process? Im pleased to announce that almost all servers have completed the first three steps of the restoral process, and we plan to start the final two steps on a server-by-server basis later today. Based on our testing, we expect boards that were active at the time of the attack to see a significant amount of data restored during these final two steps. We anticipate that the final two restoral steps will take a total of seven to ten days to be completed. Individual servers will be restored throughout that time. This means that you will see your board/server restoral sometime within that period. We are in the process of acquiring additional servers in an effort to accelerate this process. Please be aware that the final steps are the most computer power intensive, and you will notice at least moderate slowness on your server when it is being restored. We will not respond to requests to have your server restored first, and cannot restore an individual board on a server. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated 6/10: All servers have now completed the first three steps of the restoral process, and have started the final two steps on a server-by-server basis. We continue to anticipate that the final two restoral steps will take a total of seven to ten days to be completed. Individual servers will be restored throughout that time. This means that you will see your board/server restoral sometime within that period. We are installing additional servers to accelerate the restoral process. In order to return content to the boards as soon as possible, the restoral process will bring topics back out of chronological order. After we have recovered all data from the process, we will then do a final resort of topics to re-establish chronological order. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated 6/11: The restoral process continues, with additional servers brought online yesterday to accelerate the process. Please remember that in order to return content to the boards as soon as possible, the restoral process will bring topics back out of chronological order. After we have recovered all data from the process, we will then do a final resort of topics to re-establish chronological order. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Updated 6/13: The final two steps of the restoral process continue across the network. Please remember that in order to return content to the boards as soon as possible, the restoral process will bring topics back out of chronological order. After we have recovered all data from the process, we will then do a final resort of topics to re-establish chronological order. Gold Community subscriptions are expiring what are you planning to do about this? We have completed, and are in final testing of, code that will freeze all subscriptions. Assuming a successful final test, we will deploy the code today. We have also established a list of all Gold Communities that have expired since the attack, and are developing a process to restore subscription benefits to those boards. We have implemented code that has frozen all active Gold Community subscriptions as of yesterday. We have also established a list of all Gold Communities that have expired since the attack, and are finalizing a process to restore subscription benefits to those boards. Should I contact you with my questions on payment, account issues etcetera? No. Please direct questions on those topics and questions you would normally send to CS to helpdesk.ezboard.com/?_a=...p=payments Can I resume normal activities like posting and reading on my boards? Yes. We are aware of the issues that are affecting approximately 1% of boards and are working to repair them. If you are experiencing problems that are new in the last 24 hours and have not been reported or seen before. Please do not e-mail me directly with these issues, as I will forward you on to the CS team. You will not experience a faster response from CS as a result of my being involved. Ive been told of a way that I can restore my own topic titles, should I do it? Yes and No. It is not harmful for you to be doing this, but we have implemented a way to automate the restoration of topic titles. The answer to the first two questions is the same. The questions are: Will new forums made since the attack, and new topics made in those forums, be affected by the restoral process? Will new boards created since the attack be affected by either the attack or the restoral process? Based on everything we know at this time, we believe that these boards, forums and topics will not be affected by the restoral process. However, we continue to test these issues, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer to one or both of these questions may change. Can we start posting in our old forums again? Based on everything we know at this point, we believe that it is safe to post in forums created before the attack again. However, we continue to test, and research any reports that indicate otherwise. Based on that research, the answer may change. What is the status of restoring Community Chest balances and data? We will be working on the Community Chest restoral once we have freed up staff from the board restoral, security and back-up improvements. Will non-Gold Communities be restored? Non-Gold Communities are not routinely backed up. However, we have data from about 4,000 Non-Gold Communities and we may be able to restore additional Non-Gold Communities from RAM. No promises, but we are trying everything. How many servers have been restored? At this point there is no such thing as a completely restored server. Let me give you some background to put this in perspective. We have gone back into terabytes of non-back-up data looking for any board data we can find. Where possible weve put this data in the restore queue. When we learned of the hack we also dumped the contents of RAM from each server onto a hard drive. We have been restoring that data as well. With the main mode of data restoration gone (the regular back-ups) we have had to create new restoration processes from scratch. That means writing software, testing it and then putting it into production - all on no sleep. In some cases working slower IS safer - but more frustrating for you and for us. At this time we are restoring from five different data sources. Each source requires a separate step or process to restore data. Roughly half the servers have finished the first step of restoration and are in the second step of what are ultimately five steps of restoration. No severs will be fully restored until they have passed through all five steps. We cannot give you specifics of what servers/boards are where in the process and we cannot have your board opt out of the restore processes. Why am I still losing threads that were on my board after the attack? We have isolated the problem and fixed three issues that were leading to thread loss. These fixes have been applied to all servers and you should not be seeing additional losses after today. Thank you to the over 500 people who submitted information on this problem. We do not need additional information at this time, but if we get new reports of new data loss after tonight we may ask you for more information. Why am I getting request errors on my board? We have identified twelve variations of this error. We believe it will be resolved as part of the restoration process. Thanks to the hundreds of people who submitted bug reports on this error already. Should you still be experiencing this bug after the restorals are complete, we will ask for more information at that time. What is happening to Gold Community subscriptions that have expired since the attack, or will expire soon? We are currently identifying every Gold Community whose subscription has expired on 5/31 or later and will be reinstating or extending subscription services through at least the next two weeks. This will take a few days to complete. In the meantime, you do not need to let us know your board is expiring. Why is it taking so long? Believe me, we are not dragging this out for fun. We are working carefully to ensure that we dont lose more data. That means double and triple checking what we are doing. For example, we dont want to overwrite new posts in a forum when we restore that forum. So, we need to perform tests to ensure that does not happen. This caution takes time, but reduces the chance that we lose data that can be restored. How successful are the restorations? We dont know yet. The data that is restored will not be evenly distributed across all boards. Some boards will get all their data restored and some will not get any data back. We will not know exactly which boards will get all, some or none of their data back until the five restoration phases are completed on all servers/boards. We would love to send you a list of which boards are getting what data restored, but it is not information that can be generated at this time. What dont we know at this point? We dont know how long the five phased recovery process will take. Different servers restore at different rates and there is no pattern to the time it takes. We dont know if we will find more data that can be restored. But we are looking for it. What are you doing to make sure this does not happen again? We are changing your back-up processes and we are improving security. For security reasons what specifically we are doing is not something we will share in a public forum. Why are board web pages loading slowly? The restore process is taking computing power from serving web pages. Web page delivery speeds will return to normal when the restoration process is completed. Can I e-mail you with questions? Yes, I have been responding to every e-mail I have received. Sometime it takes a few hours, but I am responding as fast as possible. Please understand that the global announcements have the most up to date information. We cannot provide any information or special restores for specific boards or servers.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#172	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/16/05 04:12:20) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	*Quote:* Posted: 6/15/05 13:50 ezboard Attack Update - 06/15/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear ezboard Family, The restoral process continues on schedule. Four of five steps are nearly complete across the network; the final step will reload all restored data. We still expect all steps to be completed through the weekend. At that point, we will then go to work on restoring all community financial data, addressing Gold Community credits and other financial questions, and sharing our plans for current system improvements and beta testing of the new product. We are so very sorry for the time the restoral process has taken, and we hope that these updates have helped to reduce your anxiety. We greatly appreciate your patience and support, and want to complete this process as quickly and well as we possibly can. I have attached the Q&A from previous days update to the bottom of this message. If you have additional questions please continue to carefully read the balance of this update. Should your question still not be answered after reading this update and you dont think that our customer service team or help forums can answer your question then please feel free to e-mail me at the address below. I remain available for and welcome your emails. However, please do not write to me as a way of circumventing the normal CS process, or to request information specific to the status of your board. I will be referring all normal CS requests to the appropriate forum or queue, and cannot provide information on the status of specific boards and servers. Thank you again for your patience and understanding. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc. robertlabatt@ezboard.com
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#173	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/17/05 04:40:54) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	*Quote:* Posted: 6/16/05 11:59 ezboard Attack Update - 06/16/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Everyone, I have good news today. We can see light at the end of the restoration tunnel. The work we are doing now is delivering great results with many boards getting significant amounts of data back and more to come. Please don't panic if your particular board has not seen data restored in the last day. Unfortunately it is taking time for the restoration process to propagate throughout to all servers in our systems. Set your expectations to seeing data by Monday. Please hold off on asking CS or me to clarify things about your board until next week. This will allow us to focus on getting your data back faster. While we are on a positive note, in the last 24 hours we have located an additional pocket of data that we will work to restore. Restoring this data will commence next week after the current restoration processes are completed. You can consider this a sixth restoration process. You may be asking why we just found this data now, and the truth is that we have been running additional tests on old and new equipment and during one of these tests we located additional data. I can't tell you more about this now and please do not ask for more information. We will tell you what we know when we can. Stay tuned here for information. Finally, we have identified and are testing a back-up and restore process that will be much faster than we had implemented in the past. Remember that the restore processes we are using now are NOT the normal processes. This new procedure means that during the back-up process you will experience much less server slowness and much faster restores. More on this after we have the process nailed down and in production. Thank you again for your patience and we hope that our daily communications and open dialogue have helped you and all ezboard users to better understand what we are doing to get ezboard back to normal. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#174	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/18/05 11:16:40) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	*Quote:* Posted: 6/17/05 12:29 ezboard Attack Update - 06/17/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Everyone, The good news continues... We continue to work through the last steps of the restoral process across the network, and have reports of a great many boards getting significant amounts of data back. There is more to come, as we have also begun restoring the newly located additional pocket of data. Again, please don't panic if your particular board has not seen data restored in the last day. It is taking time for the restoration process to propagate throughout to all servers in our systems. We continue to test the back-up and restore process and remain optimistic that you will experience much faster restores. More on this after we have the process nailed down and in production. Thank you again for your patience and we hope that our daily communications and open dialogue have helped you and all ezboard users to better understand what we are doing to get ezboard back to normal. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.
IO Heather	Re: REPORT PROBLEMS WITH EZBOARD HERE	#175	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/20/05 04:09:29) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Posted: 6/19/05 10:41 ezboard Attack Update - 06/19/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Everyone, We continue through the last steps of the restoral process across the network, including restoring the newly located additional pocket of data. Once again, the restoration process continues to propagate throughout all servers in our system. Your particular board may not have seen data restored as yet. We will provide a full and detailed report on network status tomorrow, including information on next steps following completion of the restoral process. Thank you again for your patience and we hope that our daily communications are helping clarify the status of the network. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.
IO Heather	:(	#176	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/20/05 15:56:56) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Posted: 6/20/05 14:55 ezboard Attack Update - 06/20/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello Everyone, After nearly three weeks of night and day work by your tech staff here at ezboard, we can tell you that by end of day today all content/threads/posts/data that is available to be restored will have been restored. We are truly sorry for any content that is missing and while our words will not bring back that content, please be assured that we have changed our systems and implemented new technology to ensure that Gold Board content is backed up. For security reasons we are not divulging the changes we have implemented. In addition to the back-up and restore improvements, we have also implemented new security measures designed to protect the site and your communities from future attacks. Some of these measures will result in slight changes to the way some boards operate. Most of you should see no changes whatsoever. For some boards, posts were restored chronologically out of order. We will be sorting posts into chronological order tomorrow and Wednesday. We will be monitoring this activity to ensure that it does not create slowness on the boards. If there is slowness on the boards we will have to adjust the process and the sorting process may take more time as a result. With the restore process completed, we are now turning our attention to the reinstatement of lapsed Gold Community subscriptions and Community Chest funds. The reinstatement of subscriptions and Community Chest funds will take at least a week or two. We will have determined plans for compensation to ezboard Gold communities this week. Thank you especially to the thousands of ezboarders who took the time to e-mail their support to the team here. I want to share a few quotes from some of you: We are extremely appreciative of what was restored and we can rebuild what was lost with what was saved. And (with apologies to Star Wars fans) one final note from someone who had an idea who the attacker may have been: Best of luck in catching the criminal (and we both know that's what he/she is). Perhaps check your local cinemas and scan the theatre screening Star Wars. I'd interrogate anyone in costumes first Storm Troopers and especially Chewbacca. We appreciate this ezboarders sense of humor. We also understand that the attack should not be taken lightly and that we all want to see the perpetrator caught and convicted. On that note, we met again with the FBI today and are pursuing several leads. If you have any information that may lead to the conviction of an individual please e-mail it to: legal@ezboard.com. Please refrain from sending us conspiracy theories. The best information is IP addresses of the source of strange activities on your board and pointers to places where someone is bragging about taking down ezboard. Thank you all again. We deeply regret the attack and the impact it has had you and your peers and we are very grateful for your patience and support through these trying times. We will be continuing our daily updates for the next while. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.
IO Heather	Re: :(	#177	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/22/05 11:44:33) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Posted: 6/21/05 13:52 ezboard Attack Update - 06/21/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello everyone, Our update today has one important change from yesterday. We have decided to undertake one more global forum and topic reload tonight. Following that reload, all content/threads/posts/data that can be brought restored will have been restored. We will be following the reload with sorting posts into chronological order tomorrow and Thursday. This activity will be monitored to ensure that it does not create slowness on the boards. If there is slowness on the boards we will have to adjust the process and the sorting process may take more time as a result. We are now turning our attention to the reinstatement of lapsed Gold Community subscriptions and Community Chest funds. The reinstatement of subscriptions and Community Chest funds will take at least a week or two. We still expect to announce plans for compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answer other economic questions, this week. Until after those announcements have been made, we will not be responding to emails or posts with questions or demands related to particular communities. We met again yesterday with the FBI and are identifying and providing additional data for the investigation. If you have any information that may lead to the conviction of an individual please e-mail it to: legal@ezboard.com. Once again, please refrain from sending us conspiracy theories. The best information is IP addresses of the source of strange activities on your board and pointers to places where someone is bragging about taking down ezboard. Thank you all again. We deeply regret the attack and the impact it has had you and your peers and we are very grateful for your patience and support. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.
IO Heather	Re: :(	#178	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/23/05 04:00:53) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	6/22 Hello everyone, The final forum and topic reload is continuing to run. Following that reload, all content/threads/posts/data that can be restored will have been restored. We will be following the reload with sorting posts into chronological order the sorting will begin this evening. This activity will be monitored to ensure that it does not create slowness on the boards. If there is slowness on the boards we will have to adjust the process and the sorting process may take more time as a result. We still expect to announce plans for compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answer other economic questions, this week. Until after those announcements have been made, we will not be responding to emails or posts with compensation questions or demands related to particular communities. Thank you all again. We deeply regret the attack and the impact it has had on you and your peers and we are very grateful for your patience and support. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.
IO Heather	Re: :(	#179	[-]
Posts: 12614 (06/23/05 14:16:40) IO Crew Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Posted: 6/23/05 14:28 ezboard Attack Update - 06/23/05 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hello everyone, The final forum and topic reload has been completed, and we began sorting posts into chronological order last night. We have stopped the resorting process temporarily in the interest of maintaining speed and consistency of service, and will resume the resorting process during off-peak hours. Our policy on compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answers to other economic questions, has been posted as a separate Important Announcement at p079.ezboard.com/fezboard...=527.topic Thank you all again. We appreciate your support and patience during the recovery from the attack, and look forward to working together to both complete the recovery and move ahead with your communities and the network. Sincerely, Rob Robert Labatt CEO ezboard, Inc.

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