Democratic Underground Take-Down, 11/8/2016

[NeonLX]

I guess I should be proud that I got the bum's rush out the back door over at DU. I can't even remember when it was. I came in through the Bartcop door, maybe 2005? I dunno.

[MacCruiskeen]

You too, Neon? Damn.

Someone should really start a poll thread. "RI members: How many of you once posted at DU?"

[stickdog99]

DU was one of the best places on the internet for folks angry about Bush stealing the election from Gore to share information. Right after 9/11, it also served as a gathering place for people skeptical of the official story, and the information flew fast and furiously.

Soon after 9/11, it became clear that DU was a Skinnerian heat/effort sink.

[redsock]

I posted at DU for many years, mostly in the 9/11 forum.

I was never banned though. I left after a lot of the good researchers had gone (or whose voices were completely drowned out by the shitstorm that eventually too over) and the site was forbidding anyone to say anything even the slightest bit bad about the Dems leading up to the 2008 election.

[2012 Countdown]

LATEST NEWS ON THE HACK -- UPDATED SATURDAY 11/12/2016 3:00PM ET

Many of you have been wondering why it is taking so long to get Democratic Underground back online after we were hacked. Here is what's going on. (Some of this is redundant with public statements we have made before, some is updated, and some is new.)

The site was first attacked around 4:30PM ET on Tuesday afternoon. This was not a "typical" hack like a DDoS or an attempt to gain control of our web server. Instead, the hacker had found a vulnerability in our forum software.

The hacker exploited that vulnerability in what appeared to be a politically-motivated act of vandalism: A large number of posts were removed and replaced with the words "God Emperor" (a reference to Donald Trump), and a ridiculously over-the-top pro-Trump video was served automatically to all of our visitors. If you're curious you can watch the video on YouTube (WARNING: HATE CONTENT).

The DU Administrators were online at the time when the attack occurred, so we immediately shut down the site in order to block out the hacker and limit their ability to disrupt.

As you know Tuesday was election day, our most important day of the year, so our biggest concern at the time was getting the site back online quickly so our members would have access that evening. We collected some preliminary evidence indicating how the hacker had managed to disrupt the site, and based on that evidence we made what we believed were the necessary changes in order to remove the vandalism, secure the site, and bring it back online. (During that time we put up an admin-only login box to block out the hacker. If you entered your username and password into that box, you did not expose your information to the hacker.)

After a few hours we brought the site back up, but it quickly became apparent that we had not sufficiently scrubbed the site and some malicious code placed by the hacker got executed again. So we took the site offline a second time. Since we had already failed once to secure the site, we agreed it would be irresponsible to bring the site back online again until we were confident that we knew exactly what the hacker had done, and we believed the site was secure. At that point we knew we were not going to be back online for election night, and we suspected it might take days.

It took most of the day Wednesday to figure out exactly how the hacker had managed to disrupt the site, and what user information may have been vulnerable.

It is likely that the hacker had access to certain member information on an account-by-account basis: Usernames, email addresses, and IP addresses. There is no evidence that the hacker had access to our database or the full table of user information.

We believe that the hacker was not able to see your passwords -- not even in encrypted format. But even if the hacker was not able to see your passwords, they were able to over-write passwords for some accounts. Put another way: The hacker doesn't know what your password was, but the hacker might have changed it to something that they do know now. Therefore we will require all members to change their passwords when the site comes back online.

We can say for certain that donor data, such as credit card numbers or addresses, were not compromised because that information is handled by PayPal and never passes through to our servers.

As most of you know, we have three employees at Democratic Underground, and only one of us (Elad) is a real programmer who can do the complicated back-end coding to deal with the hack. If our goal was to simply plug the specific vulnerability exposed in the hack, the site would likely be back online by now. But because we know that there is a sufficiently motivated and skilled individual somewhere out there who has already vandalized our website, we are doing a much more comprehensive security review to identify similar vulnerabilities to the one exposed in the hack.

We are moving forward on two tracks: Elad is doing the daily grunt-work of editing code, and we have been working with our web host to implement a higher level of security on their end. So the relevant factors here are the number of hours that Elad can spend each day slinging code, and how quickly our web host can implement the security upgrades on their end. Once we do get the site back up, there will be a brief "training period" to teach the new security software what is legitimate traffic and what is not.

At this point we are hopeful that we can do a limited opening of the website on Monday or Tuesday. During this limited opening only Star Members will be able to login and post. We are taking this precaution because we want to make sure that we are only receiving legitimate traffic during the security software "training period." This limited opening period should only last two or three days.

We know that this has been a long and frustrating process, and the timing could not have possibly been worse. We can assure you that we want to get the site back up as much as you do.

We will continue to post messages from our members below this update. The response to our "Question of the Day" has been overwhelming, so the "Question of the Day" is somewhat unexpectedly turning into a multi-day event. (Don't worry: Elad is not involved with reading or posting your emails -- he is much too busy working on code.)

Thank you again for your patience and understanding. And thank you for the tremendous outpouring of encouragement we have received from so many of you. We will update you again as soon as we have new information.

-- The DU Administrators

[MacCruiskeen]

LATEST NEWS ON THE HACK -- UPDATED SATURDAY 11/12/2016 3:00PM ET

Many of you have been wondering why it is taking so long to get Democratic Underground back online after we were hacked. Here is what's going on. (Some of this is redundant with public statements we have made before, some is updated, and some is new.)

The site was first attacked around 4:30PM ET on Tuesday afternoon. This was not a "typical" hack like a DDoS or an attempt to gain control of our web server. Instead, the hacker had found a vulnerability in our forum software.

The hacker exploited that vulnerability in what appeared to be a politically-motivated act of vandalism: A large number of posts were removed and replaced with the words "God Emperor" (a reference to Donald Trump), and a ridiculously over-the-top pro-Trump video was served automatically to all of our visitors. If you're curious you can watch the video on YouTube (WARNING: HATE CONTENT). ...

...

[etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. .... - another giant wedge of affectless bureaucratic-technocratic blather - and still NOT ONE WORD about the election result.]


-- The DU Administrators

^^These guys are taking the piss.

a ridiculously over-the-top pro-Trump video

"over the top" ? "ridiculously"? Seriously, that's the worst thing you can find to say about it? So it went a bit too far, that pro-Trump video, did it?. It was actually kinda funny, that pro-Trump video, was it?.

If you're curious you can watch the video on YouTube (WARNING: HATE CONTENT).

"curious"? Then the ever-helpful Dr Skinner suggests that everyone should nip over to YouTube and take a look at that pro-Trump video? And then Dr Skinner - ever-considerate of people's feelings - appends an all-caps TRIGGER WARNING?

These guys are taking the piss.

- Stop Press! Latest Update:

UPDATE MONDAY 11/14/2016 3:00PM ET

Over the weekend we announced that DU would hopefully be back up on Monday or Tuesday. At this point we are very optimistic that the site will be back up on Tuesday afternoon. When DU comes back up, access will be granted to Star Members only on a temporary basis. For more information about this, please see the update below.

Thanks again for your patience and understanding -- see you all soon.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/503.php

"Star Members". Sic. There's Democracy for you. There's your Underground.

Skinner & his Firm are not "testing the waters" (sic); they are extracting the urine at an industrial rate. (Did You Know? It can be used to make gunpowder - or brain cells.)

_______________________________

Meanwhile, over at Facespook, the peasants are revolting, finally. These are the top four posts at the moment:

Michael L DeAngelis You have an "unbelievable response" on this Facebook page...you should try to "barely keep up" here, too,.There are things being said here that you've needed to hear for a long time.

Sc Martham As someone with multiple decades in IT, including web server administration and specializing in Disaster Recovery for the last couple years there's absolutely no way any reasonably run web forum is going to be down this long.

Kenneth Merriman It is starting to feel like you guys shut down this site intentionally to try to contain the rage at the DNC long enough for an establishment narrative to take hold in the press.

Greg Lamb Either these guys were the greatest hackers of all time, or something is seriously up with this. Really starting to look like bullshit.

[...]

https://www.facebook.com/democraticunderground/#

[slomo]

It is starting to feel like you guys shut down this site intentionally to try to contain the rage at the DNC long enough for an establishment narrative to take hold in the press.

That was how I read their "oops sorry not sorry" lame-ass apology. I mean, I read the report that the DU site was up again (here on RI) only after I saw all the Google News items blaming Clinton's loss on ... wait for it ... Comey and the FBI.

Not that I really care. Just watching from the sidelines .

[seemslikeadream]

an old friend from DU wrote this today on FB

Nadin Brzezinski
2 hrs ·
Well this is a bad sign as to democrats learning anything...Democratic Underground was hacked, so they claim, so the Facebook page became the non moderated place for people to tell hard core partisans you messed up.
After a few days of pretty frank discussion...they had it. Comments are now disabled. DU is a minuscule part of the Democratic Neoliberal establishment. Yes, Skinner's wife worked in the campaign, and him and his partners coded the Democratic Leadership Councis site in the 1990s. Believe it or not, right out of college..I know.
i wonder if some of us posting those little facts finally led to this closing of comments? But if this is the way things are going to go within the Democratic Party overall..enjpy your years in the wilderness.
it might also signal the neoliberals are starting to loose power. After all, Nancy Pelosi might be a back bencher soon. Ah palace intrigue. For the record, once they supposedly open the site for us the unwashed masses, even if you do not intend to ever post there again...go back and change your password...just in case they were actually hacked. It is cyber security 101

Nadin Brzezinski Mo Cahill yes, and some is self inflicted. Trust me, all I will do is change my fracking password, but DU is a hate site, against working class, fdr democrats.
Like · 1 · 1 hr

https://www.facebook.com/nadin.brzezins ... nref=story

[stickdog99]

I wonder if star members will be able to post their MIHOP theories about this hack in the dungeon.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

I wonder if star members will be able to post their MIHOP theories about this hack in the dungeon.

I'm almost tempted to ask them that question. But since I haven't donated to them in over ten years and I certainly don't have any plans to give them my credit card info after all this shit, I won't.

[82_28]

I never posted there ever and never read it either. I did a few times and basically said this place is bunk and lost interest.