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Nausicaa.net picks up the pieces after hacking
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A week after the Russia-based attack on the Ghiblink web server, those in the organization are picking up the pieces.
"To date, I have received over 200 well-wishing messages from concerned fans, which is really very touching," said one of the web masters in an update on the rebuilding effort. The letters, which include offers of help and general well-wishings, are available on Nausicaa.net for public viewing.
New information about the attack reveals that the hackers, which utilized the Russian domains dialup.ru, wsnet.ru, and *.ac.ru, accessed Ghiblink by intercepting the log-in password of Ghiblink's Larry Greenberg (who does not have access to a secure telnet terminal). According to Ghiblink, the hackers did not cover their tracks well, to the extent that their exact e-mail addresses, login times, and dialup server, making positive identification easy with the cooperation of their internet provider.
Other new information released by Nausicaa.net indicates that there were actually two different hacking sessions. The first, executed the night of Friday the 16th, utilized Green's account for malicious purposes, but was discovered and stopped before much damage could be done. "The root password and most other user passwords were changed to prevent further break-ins that way, and Larry's account was locked with a "please contact us" message, so that he could make arrangements with us for access to his account," said Michael in the site's recovery calendar.
The second attack occured on the following Saturday, and caused much more damage. The attack was discovered just in time to thward further damage to other machines, but too late to prevent any files on the Nausicaa.net server from being damaged beyond recovery. In a reverse hack, illegal pirate software directories and the Windows directory was deleted from the hackers' machines, and their access data was collected and delivered to the proper authorities.
Kanji T. Bates, author of 101 Things To Do With A Dead Totoro, informed the webmasters about a project at Stanford University known as "Google that archives other web sites. The Nausicaa.net web site on Google was six months old, but it is being used to replace what was lost.
Meanwhile the efforts are taking their toll. "Jeremy," the site's head master, reportedly got a total of nine hours of sleep over the last week, and "Michael," who is currently supplying the updates, is a bit under the weather.
