May your day be touched
by a bit of Irish luck,
brightened by a song in your heart,
and warmed by the smiles
of the people you love.

It’s happened to a number of our clients.  They log in to facebook only to find that their profile has been posting on their behalf.  Aaack!

We have a client who isn’t the most techno-saavy person.  She’s only been on facebook for a few weeks and is really just starting to get oriented to the amazing and wonderful power and diversity of the platform.  So I was a bit surprised to get a post to my wall this morning:

I zapped her a quick email that I then thought may be useful for more of you:

Unless you really got a free iPad (which I find highly doubtful), do this:

1. Log into facebook.
2. Go to: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications
3. Delete ALL applications you’re not using by clicking the blue ‘x’ to the right.
4. In the upper right hand corner, click ‘account’ then, center of the page, click ‘password’.  Change yours.
5. Now click the ‘notifications’ tab (these tabs go across the top of the white part of the page).
6. Review this page and change any checked boxes to your preferences.

That should keep facebook apps from having access to more than you prefer, and posting on your behalf.

So tell me, beachdog fans, is this useful info for you, or old hat? 

~Keleigh

12/13/10, 11:30 am
One of our hosting servers is down and technicians are working on the problem. If your site is affected use domain-based email or forwarders, your email should be held in queue and delivered once the server is back online.

It looks like the attack that occured on 12/08 is resuming. We will post updates as soon as we have them.

Thanks you for your continued patience.

12/13/10, 1:15 pm

Server functionality has been restored. Please let us know if you encounter any lingering issues.

12/08/10, 9:00 am
One of our hosting servers is down and technicians are working on the problem. If your site is affected use domain-based email or forwarders, your email should be held in queue and delivered once the server is back online. We’ll post updated information as it becomes available.

11:45 am
We’ve confirmed that the reason our server was shut down was due to a malicious attack.  The on-site server administrators continue to work on the problem; until the attack source is terminated, our server must stay offline.  Mail runs through a different machine but is not able to be directed for delivery until we can put our server back online.  This attack is affecting servers in addition to our ours; you are not alone in your frustration.

1:50 pm
We’ve just been informed that the malicious attack is increasing in severity.  Your data is safe.  Your email is safe. The only way for us to keep it that way at the moment is to keep our server offline.

If your site is NOT affected by this issue, there is no need to worry;  we’re told our other servers are [a] not under attack and [b] there is no reason to suspect they will be.

Dartmouth is a shared server, meaning we share the hardware with other companies and do not yet know if it is one of our sites, one of the others, or the machine itself that was targeted.  All of our other servers are dedicated, meaning every site on the machine is one we have built and administrate.   We will be evaluating the need to move sites on the shared server to a dedicated server when we have more information.  Any of our customers who want to make that move regardless just need to let us know: 360-642-4431 or webmaster@beachdog.com.

3:15 pm
From CEO of the company managing our hosting machines:
“Just wanted to update real quick, we have been working on this non stop and hope to have this resolved very soon.  This attack is on a scale that we haven’t seen in many years and the normal protections were not able to handle it (Cisco Guard and a lot of other protections). We are working closely with our DC to stop it and will have an update soon.”

4:10 pm
We’re pretty sure at this point that we are a part of the Wikileaks attack.  More info: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11935539
Based on Wikileaks statement of who they are trying to attack, we are confident that none of our sites were targeted but are rather casualties of the war.  We still don’t have an ETA on our server coming back online.  However, now that the attack is slowing down and malicious traffic is becoming almost manageable, we’re re-booted and able to access some of the back end of the server.  If this course continues, as we expect it to, we should see sites coming back online over the next couple of hours.  Many are back online now.