I was on a plane all day so I got word of this pretty late, but as many of you know, the RateBeer site has been hit with a flurry of new attacks over the weekend..and it got worse today. The site remains down as I write this…
What to do? [Click ‘Continue On!’ and scroll to the end of the page]…
But first…Joe Tucker sent out a message to members today (in case any of your RateBeer email accounts are now defunct like mine).
Dear Fellow RateBeerian
I’m sorry to say that despite our best efforts and an outstanding group
of worldwide volunteers and active raters in countries around the the
globe, we’ve come to a point where it’s difficult to resume our service
to craft beer community.Recently we’ve come under a steady attack by hackers to shut us down.
I’m very sorry to say that for now that they’ve been successful. And I
realize that correcting the issue is beyond my abilities and means.I’m asking you tonight for help.
If you can recommend a top tier Windows IIS/SQL Server security expert
or can donate money to RateBeer for the cause please do. Please send
help to joet@####beer.com either via PayPal or via mail. I’m trying very
hard to bring back our service to the community. Please help.Sincerely
Joe Tucker
The site has played a major role in the boon of craft beer, and conversely to Beer Advocate, which is more U.S.-centric (not a bad thing, just saying), has left a worldwide footprint. After eight years, I hope that they don’t let this defeat them, and I’m sure that the RateBeer community will support any drastic decisions that they have to make in order to clean the system up.
Going forward, here is what you do…
1) Should they bring the site up again, by all means back up your reviews. It has been three months since that article. Hopefully it was of use to someone.
2) You may consider first writing your reviews in a word document or excel file on your computer and copy-pasting from there to the RateBeer site.
3) Install Firefox and use it as your browser from now on. AND download a plugin called NoScript. Nobody likes change, right? In this case, a change from Internet Explorer to Firefox with NoScript attached would have saved some of you who actually got your computers infected. It takes some getting used to but is worth the added security. There are over 30 million downloads of this program and I would be happy to write a post on how to set it up, but only if a bunch of people were interested.
Wonder why hackers feel the need to attack ratebeer. Who did they make enemies with?
Forget downloading plugins: http://www.AVG.com
Hey, just in case you missed this, we have put up a refugee camp here – http://ratebeersecondhome.com
Most recently from Joe on Facebook:
“The community response has been overwhelming. Thanks to all of you who sent us help, beer (yeah!), offered advice, sent us your hard earned dollars, pounds, crowns, pesos and euros, offered help, words of encouragement, and simply toasted us all here in the trenches. We are now very close to meeting today’s goals of having a plan and the money to execute it.
I hope we can be back in a limited way in less than three days but this is really up to our security advisor. I want to be absolutely certain we’re offering our users a safe environment before we open our doors. I’ll send updates here and to the ratebeer community at facebook.
cheers,
Joe
Donations: [email protected]
http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/ema/index-outside“
This is a travesty! Well, my recommendation is to replace the whole system with something non IIS-SQL Server based. Go with MySQL on Linux, much more secure. Probably a lot easier to find someone to assist on that front as well; all admins I know love beer!
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