Spam Incidence on the RPGBN

[A Terrible Idea]

Sometime this morning a member site was compromised, resulting in a
great deal of spam being syndicated onto the RPGBN site. The member
site, and the related spam articles, have been excised.

There are generally two reasons that a blog gets compromised: running
an unpatched installation of your blog software (wordpress is a
common culprit), and overly weak password (like your username as your
password).

I'm not aware that there is a policy in place to address this
particular issue, and if there is it probably needs clarification
anyway.

1 - Getting hacked happens. It's not the end of the world, it just
sucks to deal with. Sometimes it's not your fault, but most of the
time it is.

2 - The only thing that sucks worse than dealing with a hack is
everything thinking you are an idiot and got hacked because one of
your member got hacked and the syndication software picked up their
articles.

3 - If you get hacked and the front page of the RPGBN gets a bunch of
syndicated spam posts from your site, you'll be removed from the
network and your RPGBN posts will be deleted.

4 - If you address the situation, you are free to reapply for
membership. Your application will need to contain a satisfactory
explanation for why you got hacked, and why it won't happen again.

5 - Obviously, repeat performances will need to be addressed
differently.

As a side note, I'm a West Coaster, and a late riser to boot, so if
you wake up a couple hours before me and see a problem, shoot me an
email and don't panic if I am not awake.

-d

[Crater]

It looks like the site sending the spam was mine. And when I say was,
I mean 3 months ago it was. Today it is not. I closed the blog and
sent notifications out to everyone linking to it, but this was the
same week that the turmoil happened with RPGBN and it looks like it
got lost in the shuffle. The domain name itself expired a few days
ago and was purchased by a spammer.

I know none of that really helps, but I did want to clarify the
situation.