In case anyone else is wondering, Ezboard is the Victim Of a Vicious Internet Attack
Looks like we’ve lost (at least temporarily) the G’Dope Board. 
Yeah I know.
Some of the screaming you heard was people going mad as a couple years worth of roleplaying stories went poof.
How can a hacker destroy the backups as well? Are the backups stored on the same server? Isn’t that a bit risky?
I would guess that the backups were on a different machine, but that the media was mounted on the servers so that backups can be made quickly and easily at any time. A site this big probably makes backups constantly. Still, I would think that the backup media itself would be backed up and taken off site on a weekly basis, because you never know when a disaster might strike. Not just this kind of attack, but physical disasters as well, such as fire, flood, etc.
What happened, exactly?
Exactly? I’m not sure but from what everything says, someone hacked into the server and started erasing everything. They got mostly the posts on the boards and the most recent backups.
Right now they are working to bring everything back up, and restore the backups they still have.
NADS was mostly unaffected. We lost some stuff, but as there were plans to switch servers anyway, NADS has essentially just moved home early, and can now be found here.
TheLoadedDog, IceWolf and other G’Dopers are currently taking refuge there as well 
I am woefully stupid at computers, but is there any way to track down the perpetrator(s) of this meanspirited act and make life miserable for them? As I recall, during the Winter of Our Missed Content, the SDMB was attacked in much the same manner and I don’t remember reading that anyone had been caught and punished.
G’Dope, along with the entire Ezboard network went down on Tuesday ('merkin time) when some scumbag decided to play silly buggers with it. The hacker was able to access some of the back-ups too.
News of what actually happened was filtering through slowly at first, and repairs are also going seemingly slowly simply because of the sheer scale of the hacking attack. Some boards came back online soonish, but were terribly crippled. G’Dope managed to surface for a few hours on Wednesday; just long enough for me to ascertain that it looked fairly well fucked over. Most threads have lost all but the OP, replies were not possible, one entire forum was wiped (but it was only the New Zealand forum so nobody cares d&r 
), and the money that members had donated was seemingly lost. I visit several other boards running on the Ezboard system, and they are at the moment back up but limping a bit. NADS Mk I is back online (I won’t link to it - use Angua’s new non-Ezboard link instead) , and the fabulous Kiwi Clan (free plug there - I go for the nice folks over there, but if you like Hobbits and such it’s good for that too) is back up and running now, but still with some unresolved technical problems. NoClueBoy’s Star Trek Board appears to be up, but looks to have lost its content. G’Dope, unfortunately, has taken a much worse hit - it is completely unreachable, and has been that way for three or four days. I can’t even get back in there to survey the damage and try to clean things up. Ezboard staff are apparently swamped with help requests, and I have no way of knowing when my board will be back up.
Latest news for G’Dope and all other Ezboards is as follows:
- The boards will all be back up within the next several days.
- It is unknown how much content will be impossible to recover. It is suspected that the last month’s worth will be gone for most boards, but some boards might lose much more.
- The financial contributions members have made are reportedly safe and can be restored.
- Ezboard sucks all manner of arse.
Any G’Dopers reading this: hold tight - I will keep you informed of the situation as it progresses. Thanks for your patience.
Nearly forgot - I’d like to thank Angua and the other Nadsters for their hospitality. They gave us all a nice cup of tea and some bickies, and we’re all over there with our feet up watching a bit of telly. I got the comfy chair!
Whoa - sorry to hear about that, Loaded. Been a while since I’ve stopped by the G’Dope board, admittedly, but would be a shame to have lost all that witty repartee and banter.