The Worldbridges Server Disastera, Details of the Losar Attack Options

[Jeff Lebow]

First, some background...

Pusanweb & Koreabridge have been hosted on 'Worldbridges dedicated server#1' for about two years now. Worldbridges is the grand vision of a 'global network of homegrown webcasting' - started working on it back in '97. Pusanweb and Koreabridge kind of happened along the way. Since I left Korea almost two years ago, I've been spending most of my online energies there.

Pre-disaster, that server hosted more than 125 sites, including about 70 Tibet related websites. I had worked with some of these organizations in the past and since we had resources to spare, I was happy to offer them free hosting. Because of this, our server has been blocked in China since it went online.

What happened...

On the day of the attack, I saw the hackers coming in from a lot of different locations - they tend to relay their attacks off other IP's so it can be pretty tough to accurately track. However, a number of other servers that host Tibetan sites were attacked on the same day (which happened to be the first day of Losar - Tibetan new year), and disabled to varying degrees, so I think it's a pretty safe bet that the anti-Tibet forces were behind the attack.

Very regrettably, I had not paid for automatic backups of the server. We've never had much money to spare and I just didn't expect that this worst case scenario would ever happen. We've had hackers attacking pretty much constantly for the last two years, and I thought the server had been adequately defended. I'd always been able to patch any holes in the past and there was never any loss of data.

Where to from here...

Koreabridge and Pusanweb have now been moved to 'Worldbridges Server #2', which has more space, memory, and bandwidth, while all of the Tibetan sites have remained on Server#1. We have also paid experts to tighten security on both servers and automatic backups have been installed - barn door now firmly closed.

Most of the html content existed on people's computers, so those pages are possible to restore, but all of the php programs needed to be manually backed up in order to preserve the data. I do have a backup of the forums from September of 2005 and am currently attempting to create an archive of all the posts that appeared up until that point. Running in to a few glitches but hope to make that available soon.

I apologize to all those who contributed to making these forums such a useful, interesting collection of information, opinions, chitchat, and ...well, the other 90% of the posts I dropped the ball. I really should have made sure to maintain current backups and am truly sorry for not doing so.

Hopefully, this incident will have some positive side effects. The Koreabridge network of sites have been in need of an overhaul for quite a while. Aside from updating things like the forum script, we really need to remake the sites to reflect the changes in the way people use the internet. Our guides sections should be wiki's (already installed at http://pusanweb.com/guides/index.php, yet to be populated with content), we should be doing a much better job of tapping in to all of the great blogging that's going on out there, and we need to become more multimedia, by creating a home for Korea oriented podcasting and vlogging.

The management team is working on ways to revitalize these sites and looking for people to help out by managing different sections and/or projects. We welcome all ideas, suggestions, and questions, and we especially welcome people willing to make a commitment to bringing these ideas to life and keeping them going. There's never been a shortage of ideas. There has always been a shortage of people to make them happen. The management team can be contacted at manager@koreabridge.com and we will certainly stay tuned to the forums for ideas posted here.

Thanks again, Sorry again, and here's to a secure, revitalized future for these sites,

Jeff Lebow
Formerly known as 'The Pusanweb Guy'
Currently known as 'The Guy whose server got whacked'

[Jeff Lebow]

A quick follow-up...

It is still possible to retrieve posts that appeared on the old forums using google's cached versions of pages.

If you go to Google and search for site:koreabridge.com forums showtopic and click on 'cached', you can find a lot of former posts. You can refine the search by topic and/or username. Not sure how long the cached versions will stay online, so grab them now while they last. This also works with Yahoo and MSN.

Quick follow-up (part 2)

Glitch overcome. The archived boards are now online at
http://koreabridge.com/oldforums/
All forums are set to 'read only' so it is not possible to post.

The last five months have been lost, but 50595 posts have been recovered.

[Biba]

Hi Jeff ! gd 2 C U again
and congrats.on Ur transformation frm
'The Pusanweb Guy' 2 'The Guy whose server got whacked'

oh, so, there's a cyber-war goin'on out there
up in the mountains huh .

why couldn't the WiseMen who R told 2've been up there for years
prevent this from happening ?

[ignint]

Being that you are very computer savvy Jeff do you think the Perpetrators chose "Losar" because the identified with the misspelling of their names?