This thread could also be titled, "Why Politicus Maximus was not revived after the hacker break-in."
The hackers were able to break in because dBoard software had no security features whatsoever. Making the software secure was on my list of things to do before taking the software commercial, but I hadn't gotten to it yet.
So the hackers broke in and gave me a crash course on site security. Thanks to the hackers (and I mean that sincerely - they found security holes I never would have thought to plug), this site's software is now very secure, but unfortunately Politicus Maximus was a casualty. The site still exists, but I disabled it because it has the same insecure version of the software that caused so many security problems here at EvC Forum.
One could reasonably argue that the odds that hackers are going to take any interest in Politicus Maximus is miniscule, but the same was true of EvC Forum. The only reason they came here was because Crashfrog had pissed them off debating abortion at some other site, and so they poked around the web for other websites Crash was using, found this one, broke in, stole his password, discovered he was using a different password at the other site, and so they decided to have some fun here.
The reason I can't reactivate Politicus Maximus in its current state is because it wouldn't be just Politicus Maximus at risk but the entire server. The security holes are big enough to allow hackers to take over the entire server. I can't take that risk.
Politicus Maximus could be reactivated, but there are a couple things I should explain. First, and I hope this isn't terrible news to anyone, all the old discussions and member registrations are gone. I'm sorry, but I wasn't performing backups on Politicus Maximus. All the images live on, though, since images are not kept in the database.
And second, Politicus Maximus can only be revived with a new version of the software. The old version is too risky.
There are a few ways to go with updating the Politicus Maximus dBoard software:
- Update to the current version.
- Wait and update to the new templated version. The templated version will be highly configurable. For example, if you wanted to move some of the information from the status box at the top to the bottom, you could do that. I'm not sure when the templated version will be available, but I am working on it right now and making excellent progress. The only problem is that there's a lot to do.
- Update to the current version now, then update to the templated version when it is available.
Edited by Admin, : Remove redundant signature.
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