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Comments: 340 +-   Blogger Hacked on Friday October 25 2002, @12:01PM

Posted by michael on Friday October 25 2002, @12:01PM
from the it-must-be-friday dept.
security
WCityMike writes "Blogger has been severely hacked into, with users' passwords and e-mail addresses being replaced with 'hacx0redbyme' or 'hax0redbyme.' Apparently, attempts to change your password or other information do not succeed due to a major database problem. Blogger currently has no official news: its main page simply apologizes for being down for repairs and its status blog has no information, probably suffering from the same accessing problem as other blogs. In the meantime, discussion, information, and advice is appearing on the weblogs of Anil Dash and Tom Coates, as well as this QuickTopic thread. Glad I use another journaling service." We usually try to avoid "Site X Hacked!" stories, but since this affects so many people - and, heh-heh, they don't have anywhere else to talk about it - here you go.
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  • A bit mean. (Score:3, Funny)

    by scumdamn (82357) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:03PM (#4530941)
    How could he say "heh-heh"? Blogging is a required service of the internet now! Without Blogs, what are we? Blogs are what seperates us from the animals! (well, that and product placement)
    • by gowen (141411) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday October 25 2002, @12:05PM (#4530971) Homepage Journal
      Blogs are what seperates us from the animals
      Thats true. You never see dogs boring each other witless with the irrelevant minutiae of their lives. Mind you, dog's can lick actually their own genitals, which is pretty much what blogging is a substitute for...
    • by gabec (538140) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:53PM (#4531406)
      What I did today: Well my 'blog website is down today. I dunno why. Golly. Luckily enough I found another website (as you can see) where I could babble on and on about absolutely nothing. Felix, (my roommate's cat) is doing just fine, thank you for asking. Did you see the X-Files re-run last week? Oh dear, look at the time. Maybe the normal blog website is back up. *hope*hope*
    • by scott1853 (194884) on Friday October 25 2002, @01:13PM (#4531603)
      You're absolutely correct. People need a place to discuss topics ranging from the great tasting new Pepsi Twist [pepsi.com] to the new Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza from Pizza Hut [slashdot.org] that's so deep, you'll need to eat it with a fork.

      Without blogging capabilities we would be just like animals you would see on The Crocodile Hunter on Animal Planet [discovery.com], Wed. and Sat at 8pm, 11pm, and 3am.

      All in all, blogging gives us purpose, and gives us a sense of comfort, similar to the new E-Class from Mercedes-Benz [mercedes.com]
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2002, @12:03PM (#4530944)
    Authorities were puzzled by the seemingly strange rash of "FIRST HACK!!!" posts on slashdot.org that arose shortly thereafter.
  • by LordHunter317 (90225) <askutt@gmail . c om> on Friday October 25 2002, @12:04PM (#4530949)
    I wouldn't want some l337 hax0r coming in and reading everything about my personal life...

    Oh wait, everyone can do that.

    Doh!
  • by CySurflex (564206) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:05PM (#4530962)
    Yeah "they don't have anywhere else to talk about it" is definitely a good reason. BTW, my mom doesn't have anywhere else to talk about her recipes.
  • Blogger's troubles (Score:5, Informative)

    by spookysuicide (560912) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:06PM (#4530974) Homepage
    Blogger has been having a lot of troubles lately, if you can find your own web hosting, you may want to consider using the very easy to set-up movable type [movabletype.org].
    • Or Drupal [drupal.org], a superior tool IMHO.
    • by MisterSquid (231834) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:32PM (#4531231)

      Movable Type is indeed excellent weblogging donationware. The folks at Movable Type [movabletype.org] are great at providing requested features and documenting their software. Installation takes (and I mean this) fewer than 15 minutes, set-up maybe 1/2 hour for even the most non-technical of users.

      I would rather run the latest release of Slash and went so far as to even check out chromatic's [wgz.org] Running Weblogs with Slash [amazon.com] (NB: /.'ers, /. is a weblog) after reading this recent /. story about "Building Online Communities." [slashdot.org]

      My problem though is that Slashcode requires a dedicated server--or one on which you have root acces--to install. I'm sure this gives Slash many advantages, but those of us who can't afford dedicated server solutions can't make use of those advantages. My web host doesn't even allow shell access.

      Movable Type (and a few other brands of weblog software) offers people with cheap web-hosting solutions to successfully install high-quality, customizable, open-source weblog software. The couple who run Movable Type produce a quality product. Check them out if you want to run weblog software but don't have a lot of money.

      I wonder if the /. crew couldn't be persuaded to come up with a version of Slash that doesn't require a dedicated server . . .

  • Blogs, who need em? (Score:3, Informative)

    by zaren (204877) <holdthis@mail.com> on Friday October 25 2002, @12:06PM (#4530978) Homepage Journal
    I signed up for a blog once, to see what all the fuss was about. I ended up scrapping it and going back to doing page entries manually. It ended up being MUCH less hassle than having to use someone else's software, and then having to go back and re-tweak things with it. Editing HTML from the command line in a shell is much more time-efficient, IMHO.
    • Sure, but for a majority of web users, a simple blogging application is the way to go. And because these easy-to-use blog apps have been provided, that's why they have become popular.
    • Web logs are amazingly convenient for people who don't have the skills to edit from the command line. Remember, most people on the internet aren't as savvy as you or I are, and to them, blogs are an easy and efficient means to updating their personal site. Don't put them down simply because they found a way onto the web without your skill level.
  • hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2002, @12:07PM (#4530983)
    Well, since the home page just says the site is down, I'll have to ask here. wtf is blogger?
  • Good for them (Score:3, Insightful)

    by photon317 (208409) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:07PM (#4530987)

    I hate the word blog and all its derivatives, they deserve it for promoting this pop-culter-esque net phenomenon. Either you run a news site, a discussion site, a community, a personal journal or something along those lines. Blog is a stupid term someone made up to sound cool.
    • Re:Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)

      Oh, I'm sorry. Because someone uses a term you don't like, they deserve to be hacked? That's absurd. I'm sorry you have a personal problem with a certain combination of letters.

      It's not like "blog" was created by an ad agency, or by some company to sell it's product. It's a contraction of "Web Log", which is what these types of sites are. Don't like the word? Don't use it. But don't wish an attack on someone because you find time in your day to hate a contraction.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2002, @12:07PM (#4530988)
    .... the 12 people who actually care about blogs at all are furious that their lives just got a little more pitiful.
  • Blogout. (Score:5, Funny)

    by b0r0din (304712) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:08PM (#4531003)
    Good thing I chose hax0redbyme as my original password. Ahh, the 1337 L1phs7y13.
  • recommendation (Score:5, Informative)

    by flanker (12275) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:08PM (#4531004)
    Disable or reset the password of the account used to FTP your blog to your web server ASAP.
  • by Bonker (243350) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:11PM (#4531026)
    Slashdot, for example, is a lot more of a news and current events site than it is Taco's personal weblog. k5 is more about essays and news. Occasionally, however, I'll stumble across a blog while looking for something else. If I don't know what it is at first, I tend to read it for a few seconds before going back.

    LiveJournal blogs are the worst, IMHO. People go on and on about events and parties with people that 99.99999% of their readers have never met. Once I realize I've stumbled across something like that, I leave it as soon as I can.

    Is it exhbitionism/vouyerism? If I read stories about a person's private life, I'd much rather they beging with a line like, "Dear Penthouse, I've always read the letters in your magazine but never thought that something like that could happen to me..."
    • by eclectric (528520) <bounce@junk.abels.us> on Friday October 25 2002, @12:17PM (#4531094)
      Well, personally, I don't care if any of my readers know who I'm talking about. I really use a weblog to keep track of my state at any given time. This lets me look back and say "oh, that's what I was thinking." I mean, I don't care if I'm the only person in the world who reads my weblog.

      Why put it on the web? Well, there are often times, on irc and in email, when I want to point someone to something I've written... plus, if anyone is visiting my website, then it's possibly they want to know more about me. If they don't, then fine. If they do, then the weblog is there.
    • by jacobito (95519) on Friday October 25 2002, @02:04PM (#4532127) Homepage

      LiveJournal blogs are the worst, IMHO. People go on and on about events and parties with people that 99.99999% of their readers have never met. Once I realize I've stumbled across something like that, I leave it as soon as I can.

      The obvious response is that you're not their audience. Most bloggers write to keep up with their circles of friends, not to impress the general public with the minutiae of their daily lives.

    • by wunderhorn1 (114559) on Friday October 25 2002, @02:15PM (#4532242) Homepage
      OK, here's the thing: Many people who keep blogs have *actual friends* with whom they like to keep in touch with. This idea of writing to friends may be an unfamiliar concept to you, but it's actually quite an attractive idea: You can tell people about your life, and those who care about you can read it and even write back! It's like writing letters, only you have a log of what you've written which could possibly be valuable at a later date, plus it's "write once, read everywhere" which saves you the time of having to compose a new letter each day for every person you want to know about you, and removes from them the burden of obligation to reply to everything you write!

      AND (this gets even better) because it's publicly accessible, you can meet new people with whom you can make friends! You may not have grown up with access to the online world, but for the generation that has, the internet is a great venue for social interaction.
      Does that help you understand why blogs appeal to some?

      If you come across a blog whose contents do not interest you, it probably wasn't meant for you to read. That doesn't mean there aren't people who do care about that person and enjoy keeping in touch with them.

      Oh yeah, and like the other guy said, your web page seems suspiciously weblog-like. And I liked the rant where you bitch about the Taliban's web page :-)

    • by Zulfiya (44302) on Friday October 25 2002, @03:02PM (#4532598) Homepage
      Well, they're not necessarily for you. LiveJounal, in particular, is geared towards reading other LiveJournal entries. That is, you get together a circle of ten or so friends and socialize. It's not about being informative or entertaining, it's about socializing. Since adding and deleting "friends" is more or less trivial, people leave their journals open (or "public") in the hopes that a person interested in other members of their mini-network will find them and become a new "friend".

      You don't get anything out of the little circle o'exhibition because it's really not there for your benefit. Move along.
  • by BMonger (68213) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:11PM (#4531032)
    I really didn't cheat on my math test like I said in my blogger!!! Somebody hacked it... yeah... that's it...
  • by eclectric (528520) <bounce@junk.abels.us> on Friday October 25 2002, @12:12PM (#4531036)
    Luckily, I was worred when I first setup my blogger account, so i switch to a mysql database on my own webserver instead. Eventually, I ended up using movable type to manage my weblog. If you have access to a mysql database on your webserver, I would really recommend doing this.
    • by Inoshiro (71693) on Friday October 25 2002, @01:06PM (#4531508) Homepage
      MySQL is really overkill for your work. My changelog uses a Perl script which parses my entries into XHTML. It even nicely preserves my double-spaced end-of-sentences (I really crave that whitespace...). I'm starting to see some slugishness from ext3 because I'm over 1,000 entries now, but I'm planning on hashing my entries into a subdir for the year. That'll limit it to 365 entries per directory (give or take a leap year :)), allowing ext3 to serve my needs for years to come.

      A good flat file system lets you reuse the VFS of Linux for smarter caching, and it's easy to NFS or SMB mount it via any machine on my private network. This also means that for someone to compromise my setup and mess with my changelog, they'd also have unrestricted access (pretty much) to my local network, meaning I'd have a whole lot more to worry about than losing my journal entries.
  • by Prince_Ali (614163) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:12PM (#4531040) Journal
    Blogs are the next coming of geocities. They clutter the internet with useless information.
    I have a blog, but I only use it to say things like, "Fdisk overflowed when I tried to format my hard drive. Now it is negative 15 Gigs!"
    So yeah, I need to be shot.
  • Blog = weblog (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gosand (234100) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:13PM (#4531053) Homepage
    FYI, the term blog comes from the term weblog. It got morphed into "we blog", and the term got overused quite a bit. So a blog is basically a journal.

    I have never used one, or intend to. For some unknown reason, it bacame popular to just ramble out your thoughts into an online journal. Whatever. I don't see why this made the news though...

  • Oh no! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 25 2002, @12:14PM (#4531058)
    Now how will we know when she's done her nails or he's bought a new stereo?!
  • While Everyone (Score:5, Informative)

    by SomeOtherGuy (179082) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:14PM (#4531061) Journal
    is looking for alternatives. b2 [cafelog.com] is a really good and powerful altewrnative. PHP, MySQl, and all the goodies.
  • As of 10:02 am, the status blog now reports:

    Blogger has suffered a security intrusion by a "haX0r." We have all the data that was changed backed up within a couple hours of the attack, so we can have things pretty much back to normal soon. Of course, we're assessing the situation as thoroughly as possible to make sure it doesn't happen again. Also, if you store your FTP login information in Blogger, it wouldn't hurt to change that on your server--though it is unlikely that information was accessed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

  • Is it just me... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Waab (620192) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:18PM (#4531097) Homepage
    or does anyone else think it's a bit much for some of these bloggers to be comparing [quicktopic.com] the hack to 9/11?

    I have to wonder what kind of life someone must lead when an attack on their favorite website is as traumatic as the events of that day.
  • by L. VeGas (580015) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:21PM (#4531129) Homepage Journal
    Hacking a blogging site is like littering in a dump.
  • Sept 11?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jzs9783 (612647) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:23PM (#4531149)
    From the QuickTopic thread:

    "This is like September the 11th all over again."

    Does that mean the attack on the WTC was a noble cause, causing many to rejoice, point, laugh, and snicker? For humanity's sake, I hope this was the thickest sarcasm ever to form.
  • Related story (Score:3, Interesting)

    by randomErr (172078) <tekrat.2d@com> on Friday October 25 2002, @12:29PM (#4531207) Journal
    MS in blog parody takedown
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/27774.html [theregister.co.uk]

    By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco [mailto]

    It's a pity that Microsoft's Beth Goza, who we teased here [theregister.co.uk] last week, has taken down her weblog [216.239.53.100]. Far from wanting to see it disappear, it ought be preserved in a time capsule.

    But not only has Beth's blog gone underground - so has the parody which inspired our story. It's disappeared from no less than five mirror sites.

    Even more extraordinary, a witch-hunt is on to find the perpetrator. One member of the PocketPC community says legal action is being threatened against the author, whose identity remains a mystery.

    "The phrase 'it will soon be out of our hands' was used by one figure close to Beth," we're told.

    It would be remarkable if Microsoft's expensive legal and public relations machinery were deployed in what is essentially a private matter.

    And highly unlikely, too, as parodies are protected under the First Amendment.

    Microsoft's approach to the press is singularly enlightened, when compared to say an Apple. The company takes barbs in good grace, and doesn't deploy feudal divide and rule tactics. It's never, to our knowledge, sued a journalist. Of course it has its favorite hacks, but in general the philosophy is - they're always going to be mean to us, they'll always be around: meanwhile, we have a message to convey, and stuff to sell.

    Evil and elitist?
    So were we being evil and elitist, as some of you suggested?

    As I replied [stretchingthought.com] to Jonathan at StretchingThoughts.com, it's onlyelitist if you think that blogs are folks' only form of expression.

    The king of webloggers Jorn Borger [robotwisdom.com] - he was the first to use the term and it's still the best [theregister.co.uk] - used to use a quote by Tolstoy in his Usenet sig:- "In human stupidity, when it is not malicious, there is something very touching, even beautiful... There always is." And there is something bewitching about Beth's ruminations such as " just for the record i like it when my foods touch" a line worth of Ralph Wiggum [google.com].

    No, what's strange is when an attack on one blogger is perceived as an attack on blogging in general. That implies that there can't possibly be a quality threshold in blogdom, and confirms John Dvorak's worst fears [pcmag.com]about groupthink. This is an unnecessarily defensive reaction and quite wrong. If blogs are writing, there's good and bad writing.

    Of course, John was being satirical, and he wasn't decrying blogdom: only the mentality that blogging is in of itself revolutionary [theregister.co.uk] and no criticism can be voiced, and no quality threshold can be drawn; that we must not differentiate between good and bad, because it's all somehow equally valid.

    The parody itself was pretty mean and spiteful. But it's a parody. We hope that groupthink doesn't extinguish parodies, as they help us see that the Emperor has no clothes.

    Please let us know if you've been contacted in relation to this investigation. And in the meantime, enjoy some other fine online journals by Microsoft staff:- which might be low on cheap laughs, but high on content:- min jeschwad [netcrucible.com], Inkblog [inkblog.com], and more highlighted in this Kuro5hin thread [kuro5hin.org].®
  • by aengblom (123492) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:46PM (#4531360) Homepage
    Blogs have achieved one of the most fantastic of things ever on the internet. They killed the personal web site! Anyone been asked to visit anyones "personal web page" recently? I think not!

    Personal web pages were 50 times worse than any blog. It's evolution--not revolution ;-).

    Anyway... My friend has a blog. It's is like the BBS I ran when I was 14. Some friends log in. We talk about intersting things (or not) publicly. Eventually when I did things right, a few extra people came along and we had some good conversations.
      • by aengblom (123492) on Friday October 25 2002, @01:18PM (#4531655) Homepage
        But don't compare blogs to a BBS... those were the days when you actually had to have a brain to get online, versus now, when Bertha Walmartski can blog it up to tell the world that one of her three toy poodles is depressed.

        You never signed on to my BBS did you

      • by dswensen (252552) on Friday October 25 2002, @05:49PM (#4533992) Homepage Journal
        But don't compare blogs to a BBS... those were the days when you actually had to have a brain to get online, versus now

        Give this man a 5, Funny!

        I used to frequent a BBS. The rank stupidity I encountered there still amazes me -- I kept a few logs of some of those exchanges, and my reaction varies between thinking they must have been joking and wondering how they could even operate a keyboard.

        Incidentally, that particular BBS is still running, more than seven years later. I've checked in on a couple occasions, only to find the exact same users, arguing about the exact same things, obsessing over the same miniscule and irrelevant BBS policies, carving the same mountains out of molehills -- seven years later. It gave me the chills. I sometimes wonder if they're not trapped in some kind of Sartrian hell.

        The tools have advanced, there are a lot more people on the net now, but the general level of intelligence (on both ends) is about the same as it always was. What you see in an average blog isn't any more or less insightful than what I saw in the "Grips" or "Non Sequitur" forums on the old BBS.

  • by Hyped01 (541957) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:54PM (#4531413) Homepage
    "Blogger currently has no official news: its main page simply apologizes for being slashdotted if they re-enable full content, making their downtime for repairs even worse since they'll probably suffer from the same accessing problem as many other sites linked to from /.'s home page."

    :-)

    -Rob

  • by Cutriss (262920) on Friday October 25 2002, @01:21PM (#4531687) Homepage
    Mark me as troll if you want. I don't give a shit.

    90% of the posts in this thread are all "Holier Than Thou"-type Slashdot posts from fellow geeks that obviously feel some sort of insecurity about their own lives and are thus insulting those that use weblogs.

    I don't use a weblog to achieve an inflated sense of importance or to boost my ego. I use it to keep track of what my friends and I are doing. A year from now, we'll have all graduated college, and it's nice to be able to keep tabs on everyone's day-to-day events...and to continue to do so even when we've gone our separate ways.

    Just because you *think* the Internet is full of 12-year-old girlie bloggers discussing the drab details of their lives doesn't mean it's the truth. And even if it was, who appointed you "critic of all those lowly masses"? Get a life of your own, man...
  • blogger back up (Score:5, Informative)

    by ntk (974) on Friday October 25 2002, @01:55PM (#4532036) Homepage
    Blogger's status page [blogger.com] was just updated (1150am-ish PST) to say this:

    We have found the cause of the vulnerability and have patched it. Everything is back restored and back online with the exception of the API server and bSTATS.

    • by bellings (137948) on Friday October 25 2002, @12:22PM (#4531135)
      They should be treated just like as if they burned down a building, but no, the law doesn't understand.

      They should be treated as if they burned down a building with cute little kitties living inside of it! Because, inside of every blogger there's a cute little kitty, just waiting for you to discover it.

      What these hackers have done is atrocious. It's far, far worse than petty graffiti or vandalism. They have trampled the hearts and emotions of sensitive bloggers everywhere. And for that, there can be no justice -- only bitter revenge.
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