Talk to me about web servers.

[Foggy]

From Danielle Corsetto of Girls With Slingshots:

Hey guys! I’m sorry there’s been radio silence for the past few days. The entire Blind Ferret server has been mostly down since Friday, and while our tech guy has been working all weekend long (on a holiday, even!) to fix the problem, we’ve been struggling to get everything back to normal.

From Randy Millholand of Something Positive:

Hey all! Randy here. So, over the weekend, Blind Ferret’s servers crashed. Currently they’re being rebuilt but that means they’re also completely inaccessible for viewing.

As such, I threw up this tumblr to temporarily show the new strips for Something*Positive and Danielle Corsetto’s comic, Girls With Slingshots. I might see if any of the other folks who were housed by Blind Ferret want their strips here, too.

When I tried to access GWS on Friday, Firefox blocked it as an attack site. Danielle Corsetto tweeted that there had been a malware attack against the site, but it had been fixed but Firefox/Google warnings would be up for 24 hours.

So my questions are:

1. Does anyone here know what actually happened to the Blind Ferret’s servers?
2. Why does Randy say they are ‘’ being rebuilt", what does that mean exactly? Can’t they just go to a restore point from before what ever happen happened?

Thanks

[FoundWaldo]

I have no idea what Blind Ferret is. But “just go to a restore point from before what ever happen happened” makes the assumption that they have frequent backups, which in my experience is often not the case, especially with small-scale operations as this sounds to be (one server, one admin, silly name, etc.). It also makes the assumption that they know when the compromise happened, so they know the safe point to restore to. And even if both of those things are the case, there may have been important changes that happened after the restore point which need to be re-created, depending on how fast-changing the system is.

In other words, it’s probably not as easy as it sounds.

[tellyworth]

Yup, what FoundWaldo said.

It’s very common for web sites to be hacked in order to distribute malware. Nothing unusual about that.

“rebuilt” suggests to me that they’ve started with a fresh server reinstall and are piecing it back together from original copies stored elsewhere.

[Foggy]

@FoundWaldo

I have no idea what Blind Ferret is.

Sorry. Blind Ferret Entertainment seems to be primarily a web host for several webcomics, but are involved in other related things. In my humble & uneducated opinion they seem to know what they are doing. But then I don’t know jack so there you go.

In other words, it’s probably not as easy as it sounds.

I figured as much, but was curious about the details.

Thanks.