9fans is back

9fans is back

[Russ Cox]

9fans.net was rejecting mail for the past week,
due to an incomplete system upgrade attempted
by someone who broke into the ancient Linux VM
that ran the list.  Even script kiddies can't get shared
libraries right, it appears.

I was away for the past week and unable to
look into the problem until today.  I have reinstalled
the VM and restored the list configuration from
backups.

Apologies for the interruption.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Russ

Re: [9fans] 9fans is back

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On 24 Dec 2010, at 3:52 pm, Russ Cox wrote:

> 9fans.net was rejecting mail for the past week,
> due to an incomplete system upgrade attempted
> by someone who broke into the ancient Linux VM
> that ran the list.  Even script kiddies can't get shared
> libraries right, it appears.
>
> I was away for the past week and unable to
> look into the problem until today.  I have reinstalled
> the VM and restored the list configuration from
> backups.

Cheers Russ, it's good to have it back.

So someone broke in to attempt an upgrade? ... Oh, I suppose there
was a time I would have done it too.

>
> Apologies for the interruption.
> Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
>
> Russ
>

Re: [9fans] 9fans is back

[Russ Cox]

[off topic]

> So someone broke in to attempt an upgrade? ...

I can't say why they broke in (many months ago),
but recently they announced their presence by
introducing some new shared libraries and truly
fouling up the system.  The Linux installation was
an untended Ubuntu 8.04, so it's not so surprising.
I installed Ubuntu 10.04 and set up automatic
upgrades this time, but ultimately it's not a terribly
important machine.   A reinstall every two and
a half years seems like a good deal in exchange
for having to do absolutely no day-to-day
administration.

Russ

Re: 9fans is back

[Russ Cox]

On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 10:52 AM, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> 9fans.net was rejecting mail for the past week,
> due to an incomplete system upgrade attempted
> by someone who broke into the ancient Linux VM
> that ran the list.  Even script kiddies can't get shared
> libraries right, it appears.
>
> I was away for the past week and unable to
> look into the problem until today.  I have reinstalled
> the VM and restored the list configuration from
> backups.
>
> Apologies for the interruption.
> Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

When I reinstalled, the digest mode didn't get set up right.
They should be running smoothly again, but people
who subscribe to 9fans in digest mode will have not
seen anything since December until today's 700+ message
digest.  Sorry about that.

Russ