So Why Did Ireland's Main Online Forum, Boards.ie Get Hacked?

Jan. 26, 2010 - PRLog -- ################################

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Boards.ie, the largest online community in Ireland, has become the latest target of cyber attack. A statement on the site today reports that at 11:20 GMT its database was attacked by "a source external to Ireland".

The statement says that the organisation's security response policy was triggered and that it e-mailed users to warn them of the breach.

It recommends that users change their passwords if they are common to other sites.

The statement says that Boards had contacted the Gardaí and the Data Protection Commissioner and "an independent security consultancy" and that it is following the advice given by the various bodies.

The statement goes on to assure users that those who have subscribed to the site via credit card, no such details were stored on the servers that were compromised.

The statement concludes with a Twitter link to allow users to keep up to date with the incident.

Update:

Darragh Doyle communications manager for Boards.ie spoke to Techcentral.ie and described the attack and the response. When asked about the origin of the attack, Doyle could give little detail.

"We know the IP address but we just don't want to say yet, on advice. It is outside the country."

Doyle went on to say that the Data Protection Commissioner had been helpful.

"We have a very good relationship with them. They have been advising us.

"They are confident that we have been doing all we can to protect things right now and they will talk to us next week when it all dies down.

"They don't feel that this was a lax thing on our part," asserted Doyle. "They have talked to our technical person and understand that it was more of an attack, rather than we left the gate open."

On the nature of the attack, Doyle was able to be more specific.

"It looked like it was a broad spectrum attack, but the parts of the database they accessed has all of the member data."

However, while calls were made earlier for users to change passwords on other sites that might have been also used on Boards.ie, a press release from the organisation assured users that the site employed vBulletin "Hash" to obscure the passwords.

"While this provides strong protection, we have altered all passwords on Boards as a precaution and suggest you take this time to alter other similar passwords," said the release.

A timeline for recovery and going back online was not clear, according to Doyle.

"To be honest, we just don't know. We took the site down immediately we found out to prevent anything further happening and we are working on it at the moment. I don't have a time."

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