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Model Ship World (MSW) - Cyberattack - Yikes, this is BAD

RegG

RegG

Joined
Nov 15, 2018
Messages
265
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168

Just received this in my email:


Dear Reginald,
I'm reaching out with some difficult news that affects our entire community.

Model Ship World — the Nautical Research Guild's online forum and one of the most important gathering places for ship modelers in the world — has been taken offline following a devastating cyberattack. The attackers destroyed not only the forum's primary data but all three backup copies as well. Hundreds of thousands of posts, build logs, photos, and two decades of accumulated knowledge are gone.

The NRG Board reached out to me directly and asked SeaWatch and Ships in Scale to help spread the word. Below is the official statement from MSW Administrator Jim Hatch and the NRG Board of Directors.:

In the last three days, there has been a global issue regarding the software that operates computer servers. This has impacted websites and servers around the world. An unscrupulous group of hackers had found a way around server security and had broken into many servers, destroying data.

Unfortunately for us, Model Ship World's server was one of countless to be affected.

Over the last 36 hours, our host had taken our server offline to apply software patches which would secure our server, but by the time they did this, it was too late.

The attackers not only deleted the files from our primary disc, housing MSW, but also deleted the three backups we had on a secondary, separate drive.

Model Ship World doesn't exist in any form. All files, photos, structure, posts, and data have gone.

This was out of our control, and there will be many sites around the world, including corporate/business sites, which will also be destroyed.

All we can do from this point is to move on. It will take us some time to recreate the site as members knew it. However, it will NOT have the posts, topics, and photos etc. It will be a fresh start.

Please bear with us while we look at this task, as our staff also have other regular jobs and need to fit this into their schedules.

We will be back though. Please bear with us at this time and give as much support as you can.

— Jim Hatch, MSW Administrator, and the NRG Board of Directors

If you maintained a build log on MSW, now is the time to check whether you have local copies of your work.

When the NRG is ready to share how the community can support the rebuilding effort, we'll pass that along immediately. You can also read our full post on the Ships in Scale website here.

This is a real loss for our hobby. But this community has weathered hard things before, and MSW will sail again.

Sincerely,

Mike Ellison
Publisher & Editor, Ships in Scale
SeaWatch Books
 

New forum feature - How to Export Your Thread to PDF file

IMPORTANT INFO: it remains that ONLY Microsoft EDGE is problematic. However, for those that still use EDGE, here is the most recent information I found to at least make the "Print to Microsoft PDF" Work: Run the Windows Update and make sure your system dictates it will install this: 2023-12...
shipsofscale.com
 
wow that was a wakeup call so even if you have been following a topic export it to PDF it's easy to do. The attack was a major blow to the hobby so much information just went poof! and vanished into cyber space. if we all have PDF files of things of interest like discussions on 3D printing to treenails, paint or whatever take a minute and save it. Right now Ships of Scale is one of the largest information forums on model ship building. Hopefully MSW will be back but it will take a long, long time to rebuild all that lost information,

SOS save our ship load of information
 
How about our forum? Is it being backed up often enough? Can it be copied onto an independent server (one that is not online)? Food for thought....
 
I cannot imagine this forum simply disintegrating as theirs did. The amount of work and sweat equity that has gone into bringing the forum where it is today, notwithstanding the incredible resource of shared knowledge lying within its thread inventory, wow. It should be mentioned that the simple number of virtual friendships established over the years has served to help some of us get through some very hard times. Kudos to all. Let's protect this forum from suffering the same fate.
 
Having multiple backups is not necessarily safe. I believe model ship world lost three complete backups!

What is important is complete backups done regularly and stored in different locations.

Are we doing that?

I'm sure we can work together to ensure we have regular complete independent backups, stored in different locations, and with air gap!
 
RegG said:
They had backups, and they disappeared as well. I am hoping that maybe a different method, independent of the usual server, would also be an option.
Click to expand...

We do not know where those copies were ,maybe they were in Cloude ,we also do not know how that particular host is operating,butcregardless we are goingvto take some more securityvsteps to avoid this
 
What is this world of ours coming to when hackers bother to spend time hacking an on-line place as ship modelling forum? ... what would be the motive or end goal? No obvious monetary benefit either? This is really freaking strange.... and sad at the same time!
 
mxs said:
What is this world of ours coming to when hackers bother to spend time hacking an on-line place as ship modelling forum? ... what would be the motive or end goal? No obvious monetary benefit either? This is really freaking strange.... and sad at the same time!
Click to expand...
I do not think Msw was was targeted directly,they were just on one the website effected as they hacked their host
 
zoly99sask said:
We do not know where those copies were ,maybe they were in Cloude ,we also do not know how that particular host is operating,butcregardless we are goingvto take some more securityvsteps to avoid this
Click to expand...
So you folks will work out a plan how to have multiple copies at different locations, correct? ... because it does sound that theirs were on the same server, or at least the location of the multiple backup copies has not escaped the bad people. Otherwise, what did happen would not have happened, simply put.
 
zoly99sask said:
I do not think Msw was was targeted directly,they were just on one the website effected as they hacked their host
Click to expand...
Oh, ok, got you ... I reread the announcement and indeed it sounds like that. I wonder who the host was or which software was the culprit leaving the "door" open.
 
Your link came out wrong ... you meant this, right? ... https://web.archive.org/

It seems that you only get snapshotted static html pages, not a fully functional backend, databases etc. ... so short answer is, probably not.... :-(
 
mxs said:
So you folks will work out a plan how to have multiple copies at different locations, correct? ... because it does sound that theirs were on the same server, or at least the location of the multiple backup copies has not escaped the bad people. Otherwise, what did happen would not have happened, simply put.
Click to expand...
Best (i.e. safest) pracice is to have an independent backup on an external device which is not connected to a computer (an "air gap"). eg a regular backup to an external SSD which is then UNPLUGGED after the backup. It is therefore safe from attack. (But not from fires, so those who are truly paranoid have multiple external copie sin multiple locations...!)

In the mean time I agree - everyone should export thier own (and their favourite) threads to pdf as an immediate (albeit minimal) backup.

This is at least something we can all do to help our community and the administrators who are looking after ths stuff for us, to the best of their ability, in difficult times.

Send them some thanks!
 
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