Fellow Nairalanders,

On Sunday, the 22nd of June, at exactly 1:00PM, we lost access to Nairaland's server. I immediately asked our web host to fix the problem. They refused to discuss the situation with me until very early on Monday morning, when they told me that someone hacked their server management system and used it to gain access to our server. The hacker deleted everything on our server, including our backups which we kept in a separate disk on the same server.

At that point, I knew that we had failed you in two ways: by relying on a web host which didn't follow security best practices, which led to their systems being hacked, and by storing our backups in a location where anyone who hacked our primary server would be able to access them and delete them. "Luckily", we recovered 8 years and 10 months of data out of the 9 years and 3 months of data that was lost, from a remote backup made in January.

All topics and posts created in the last 5 months are gone. All users who registered within the last 5 months will have to register again. It's awful.

The attackers probably downloaded our entire database including your usernames, email addresses, and password hashes. As a result of our use of hashing, salting, and key stretching, it won't be so easy for the attackers to steal your passwords if they are strong. However, we advice every Nairalander to please change his/her Nairaland password immediately. Please logout and then visit https://www.nairaland.com/login to use the password reset form.

You can recover your most important data using the technique below (we could not apply it automatically due to data consistency issues)
1) Search Google for the title of your thread, e.g. (title of thread site:nairaland.com)
2) Copy the URL of the page on Nairaland where the information used to reside from the search results, e.g. www.nairaland.com/123456/title-of-thread
3) Search Google's cache for that URL, e.g. enter this into google: (cache:www.nairaland.com/123456/title-of-thread)

Here's how we plan to secure your data in the future:
1) We've moved away from the host that lost our data to a very reputable host which is less likely to get hacked.
2) We've started storing our backups in remote location(s) that are completely independent of our primary server.
3) We're doing a full review of all our operations in order to greatly improve security in every way that we can.
4) We're trying to set up comprehensive disaster recovery plans so that Nairaland will survive no matter what happens.

Nairaland is no longer just Seun Osewa's lucrative hobby. It is a vital resource that Nigerians and corporate bodies rely on. It must be protected and kept alive at all costs. It deserves to be managed, not by one feeble individual, but by a robust enterprise staffed by professionals who are the best at what they do. A robust enterprise that can defend Nairaland against all threats. I will devote the rest of my year to building such an enterprise.

If you had some advertising credit in your account before the attack, please send an email to the usual address so we can sort things out.

Sincerely,
Seun Osewa.

Elementary mistakes....

Why can't you host your site yourself? How much for a server?

You are fearless

Last Backup: January 2014.

Seriously?

he has learnt some hard lessions, lets support him and move on, rather than trying to tilt the windmill. if u are an expert, mail seun, even banks, data-security firms and credit card companies suffer similar attacks. long live nairaland.

Nice Write up. Next Story Please.

This is ICT for you, this is as a result of laxity, oversight and lack of proper disaster recovery plan. This is not the first time Nairaland was attacked but this hit them badly. There are diff kinds of backup but i will suggest he backup manually. A of weekly, monthly or quarterly backup should be OK. What is the capacity of your backup ? 200GB or 500GB per month ? Can you do a differential backup ?. I have been doing this monthly in my office for the past 7 years now , a backup run for like 5hr every month, its manual, it works, its dependable.

Very sad situation. Daily offsite backups should have been the norm.

Of course, that is just focusing on the data loss, not passwords that might have been compromised..

dgitrader: he has learnt some hard lessions, lets support him and move on, rather than trying to tilt the windmill. if u are an expert, mail seun, even banks, data-security firms and credit card companies suffer similar attacks. long live nairaland.

May God bless you for that articulate, mature response. Some people here have never even created a blog before, yet they are the ones busy launching verbal & written missiles against Seun, who has tried his best to keep this site running for almost 10 years.

Haba! Naija people and their Ph.d (i.e. pull him down ) mentality.

Several Fortune 500 companies have had their websites hacked, over the past few years. Even Zuckerberg of Facebook has his account hacked! What does that tell you? No one is immune or infallible to all the multiple threats out there.

You can only do your best, add as many layers of security as possible, carry out cyber surveillance on a regular basis and pray fervently, that some misguided, twisted, retarded low-life unable to achieve anything worthwhile in his entire existence, does not succeed in tearing the creative hardwork on your social platform to pieces, simply because he lacks the imagination to create something as good as what you have done.

Seun, continue to do your best to restore total services on Nairaland. We are praying for your success....

Oga seun pls help me reactivate this thread.

www.nairaland.com/1755296/abuja-toyota-sequoia-offroad-suv

Well done

May God help you Oga Seun. Even the great ebay was hacked.

The NL Smart Response Crew
1. Seun and The Swift Response Squad
2. Seun at Work.
3. Mukinatu
4. An Unknown Mod
They rescued NL from the brink.

I don't know why I have this feeling dat nairaland can never be the same again. BTW,why is it that to like a comment is not so easy at it use to be. The page reloads each time I like a comment. Am I the only one experiencing this?

soonest: I don't know why I have this feeling dat nairaland can never be the same again. BTW,why is it that to like a comment is not so easy at it use to be. The page reloads each time I like a comment. Am I the only one experiencing this?

Yes you are! Get a smart phone and give ur grandpapa the nokia-c2 #justsaying

chiebube: And this too...
Oga Seun, pls help me with this too.
Abuja|Toyota SUV|Scanned & certified...DONT MISS THIS RIDE....N1.250M...going...
Do you have some ex-moderators who had your passwords before now. It takes an ex-insider to know some of these passwords. Am just thinking.

Type the heading on Google with your NL Handle,click cache of any of the displayed result and there you have your thread back but it's as good as opening a new thread

switsoda: Yes you are! Get a smart phone and give ur grandpapa the nokia-c2 #justsaying

Adviser Switsoda, Wot a toxic mouth u hv got.wot makes u feel is not a smart phone.mtschewwwww I forgot nairaland is not only for adults.

soonest: I don't know why I have this feeling dat nairaland can never be the same again. BTW,why is it that to like a comment is not so easy at it use to be. The page reloads each time I like a comment. Am I the only one experiencing this?

You just made me like your post. I am unliking it right away. Maybe you have slow internet connection or you didn't enable JavaScript. It has happen to me before when the internet is slow. The last backup for Nairaland is Jan 10,2014 and before then i have been liking people post perfectly. The only feature that is worth complaining about is the "Mentioned". Seun implemented that feature after Jan 10 that's why he took sometime to put it back after the restoration of Nairaland. I am surprise the feature is still working perfectly.

soonest:
Adviser Switsoda, Wot a toxic mouth u hv got.wot makes u feel is not a smart phone.mtschewwwww I forgot nairaland is not only for adults.

Smh, sorry adult babe if my earlier comments hurt you... Dont take it too far remember i was #justsaying

The same symptoms have started reappearing.