Hacked!
Some have noticed that Inside Magic has been apparently dormant for a couple of weeks. Perhaps, they thought, it was due to the holiday break or maybe Tim had gone on another bender. Nay nay, we say.
We were hacked by someone, someone bad: Someone with too much time on their hands and technological sophistication sufficient to turn idle hands towards evil.
The site was hi-jacked by the hacker person so that the dedicated and decadent staff at Inside Magic was unable to get in. We received a horrifying screen image each time we tried to enter and notification of our own impotence — a status about which we need no reminder, ever.
Finally, we restored the site to status quo ante, or so we thought. As we attempted to enter the latest hub and bub from the world of Magic, we again met failure and our screen displayed the horrible image and notification that our expenditure of great funds for cleansing and refurbishment was for naught.
We hired a second team of specialists.
They were able to trace the ne’er-do-well to a country that is also an island and is also a continent in the Southern Hemisphere and with “A” as the first and last letter of its name. Unfortunately, our site was not the only one hacked by this son of unmarried individuals. Big sites with big names and big databases were also hacked and their security teams were able to identify the country but little more.
Chances are, the security consultants tell us, the true location of the bad person is not Australia. Rather, he is likely using Australia’s internet as a conduit for his vile work whilst he lives — presumably by himself — in another location.
We note that our security consultants believe the attacker is male. Our illustration is of a female hacker for the sake of esthetics and continuity.
We are not bitter but we are poorer. The cost of cleansing and restoring the site twice has brought us to near financial inconvenience.
Fortunately, we are independently wealthy thanks to our inheritance and inexplicable ability to regenerate certain internal organs currently in top demand by transplant specialists in jurisdictions where the free market and not some out-dated sense of ethics determines recipient priority. Our staff stayed on at full pay and we have not cancelled any of our planned expenditures for expansion.
We apologize most humbly to those of you who wrote to us, tried to post a comment, or even tried to access our site for the last 28 days.
We understand that almost 80 percent of our email was lost; fortunately, not diverted. If you wrote and we did not respond, please do not presume we ignored your correspondence. If you tried to post or looked us up on Google only to experience the inhospitable rejection a hacker can provide, we apologize and thank you for returning.
To other website owners, please check your files carefully. Our team found this miscreant uploaded a file that allowed him to control the site remotely and even lock out the rightful owner. We have implemented new security and are no longer accepting comments to article postings. We will again open the membership roll but only after we can be sure it is secure from attack.
Our security consultant people advise visitors to our site are safe: the hacking did not expose readers to any risk and our membership data remained secure.
Inside Magic has been in existence since 1988. First as a newsletter sent to readers of Boys’ Life and American Girl. Later, we added electronic publishing to our portfolio with our posting available on the primordial BBS systems and syndicated by Mustang Software’s superb WildCat and WINserver. Later, with the advent of the Compuserve, we began posting to a wider audience. In 1997, we made the move to the Internet as it then existed. This is the very first time we have been hacked or taken off line for some reason other than our own inability to write and publish.
We hope it is also the last. Our security team said we should not feel safe and should assume a bad person will again attack in some manner. We hope that is not the case. Please be assured we will be back as soon as possible and will not give into those who have imbalances of time and ethics.
Thank you,
Tim Quinlan
Editor, Inside Magic
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