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Normally, when I make a post on SoylentNews, it's to talk about some exciting new feature, our future, or something similar.
Unfortunately though, on rare occasions, I have to make announcements like this one. Sometime between May 12-13th, one of our email accounts was breached. The account ("test1") was left over from go live, over a year and half ago, and had a very weak password protecting it. We believe that an automated password guesser was able to find and access the account. Once breached, the account was used to send a significant amount of spam until we deleted the affected account on the 14th May 2015.
As a result of the compromise, several spam services have blacklisted our mail server; we're currently working to try and get ourselves cleared whenever we become aware of one of these blocks. We do not believe any user information or sensitive data was compromised; the account in question was simply a virtual dovecot account with no corresponding UNIX account attached to it.
mechanicjay was primarily responsible for handling this and cleaning up the mess, and I wish to personally thank him and the rest of the sysops team for their handling of this issue. We are looking at taking steps to prevent a reoccurence such as using fail2ban and the like. Unfortunately, most IDS systems like fail2ban are incompatible with IPv6 which we use extensively internally within our network.
A sysops meeting is being scheduled to discuss this and other changes we're making to the infrastructure.
I will update this article (or post a new one) with additional information should it become available,
NCommander
(Score: 5, Informative) by Tork on Monday May 18 2015, @05:25PM
I'm usually the loudest to complain about bad moderation but honestly, around here, I rarely see it. If you'd like proof of that please feel free to look at my comments page. [soylentnews.org] I'm not everybody's favorite person here, in fact you personally have seen me in action and I've definitely butted heads with the Mighty Buzzard. But you can see here virtually all the moderations I've received have been positive.
I have no problem at all with you constantly evaluating the moderation system, it only serves to benefit me and the people that comment here. But I do want to say I really appreciate you asking that AC for proof because he has been challenged on that before and he's never provided it. From where I sit there's just a crying baby demanding a second bottle.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @06:02PM
It's not just one AC pointing out the bad modding.
engblom is a registered user who also sees that there's a problem, for example.
Others have acknowledged the problems in the past, too.
Maybe you don't want to admit there's a problem, Tork, because you are one of the users who is perpetrating this harmful downmodding.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Monday May 18 2015, @06:11PM
It's not just one AC pointing out the bad modding. engblom is a registered user who also sees that there's a problem, for example. Others have acknowledged the problems in the past, too.
So one person, probably you, has seen this problem. Great. There's something very obvious missing here, do you know what that is?
Maybe you don't want to admit there's a problem, Tork, because you are one of the users who is perpetrating this harmful downmodding.
If you really truly do believe what you're preaching, you should know this is exactly the wrong path to go down. You've already been told what you need to do. It's time to man up.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @06:28PM
Tork, there is a problem with bad moderating here.
It exists even if you don't want to admit it.
If you're part of the problem, as you very well may be, then of course you won't want to admit it.
But you should still admit it anyway.
Because there is a problem with bad moderating here.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday May 18 2015, @06:39PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @09:26PM
Hello, fallacy! [logicallyfallacious.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:27AM
That fallacy doesn't apply when there is in fact a problem, like there is in this case.
Repeatedly insisting that Obama is a Muslim is an example of that fallacy in action, because Obama is not a Muslim.
Repeatedly pointing out that there is a severe mismoderation problem here at SoylentNews is not an example of that fallacy in action, because there is in fact a severe mismoderation problem here at SoylentNews.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 19 2015, @08:09AM
Wow, I just accused Tork of being _the_ whiner (in not so many words) like, yesterday. And now here he is, a full blown reasonable Soylentil! I may have misjudged you, Tork. I concur with everything you said.