Chaos Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 TWG was hacked a few months ago, so there's a big security vulnerability. Please take a look at this topic on TWG if you are registered there: http://www.timewastersguide.com/forum/index.php?topic=8466 Check the spreadsheet that's posted. Your email is probably on that list, so you'll probably get more spam. The passwords that are in the spreadsheet are hashed, so if your password is worth anything, you're probably okay, but I just wanted to let everyone know this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eerongal Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 It's also worth noting that the passwords are only an issue if these following scenarios are true: 1. your password is the same on TWG as on your email 2. your password is a single, common dictionary word less than about 8 characters or so 3. any very common permutations there of (he110 for example) 4. Using standard or no casing as opposed to a random casing (He11o vs hE11o) 5. doesn't use extra random characters (&,^,%,#,$ for example) if any of these (well, mostly 1 and 2, less so 3 and 4) are false then you likely have nothing to worry about other than your email maybe getting a little more spam than usual since your address is posted publicly. If you would like help or suggestions for securing your password, feel free to hit me up via PM, and i can help you turn your password into something more secure (i promise i wont steal it or something ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrienne Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Even though I'm a network engineer my password to forums are always simple. My complex ones are tied to banking, anything with my SS #, ect. It seems the admins on TSG gave up on the site a long time ago. If you don't keep your code updated it's very easy to break into after a period of time with the guides plain as day online. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darniil Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Since password security was mentioned, this seemed to be a rather well-timed comic: http://xkcd.com/936/ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad_Scientist Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Thanks for letting us know about this Chaos, I would have probably missed that thread. I've tweeted both Brandon Sanderson and Peter Ahlstrom letting them know about the hack, incase they didn't already. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterAhlstrom Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 I'm aware and we're trying to decide what to do. TWG's useful days may be over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted August 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Thanks for letting us know about this Chaos, I would have probably missed that thread. I've tweeted both Brandon Sanderson and Peter Ahlstrom letting them know about the hack, incase they didn't already. If it went down, I'd very much want to move Reading Excuses to 17th Shard. I'm aware and we're trying to decide what to do. TWG's useful days may be over. That is quite sad to hear. It had a great run, though, and if it is gone I will greatly miss it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad_Scientist Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 That is quite sad to hear. It had a great run, though, and if it is gone I will greatly miss it. Indeed. I never was very active there, as 17th Shard already existed by the time I started discussing Brandon's works online, but I've looked over some of the threads there and there was a lot of awesome stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spriggan Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Hey all, sorry about this hassle but because of all the custom code that TWG's forum used it was nearly impossible to update the forum--which I did work on last night but after two hours of dealing with various errors I realized it probably wasn't worth continuing on. I do want people to know that the passwords are salted and hashed so someone would actually have to spend time on it, but it's not something that would be impossible to do. TWG was a great place for many people but all the reasons we kept it running no longer exist (reviews, keeping in touch with friends and author's forums) because of facebook and sites like the 17th shard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mycoltbug Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Chaos and Spriggan how hard would it be for us to get an archive of the stuff from TWG and put it as an archive on here for future information? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spriggan Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Not hard if all you want is an SQL dump or something similar I can pull directly from the Database. I'm in talks with Eric to get him all Reading Excuses stuff but let me know what else people are interested in and I'll look into the possibility of providing that content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrienne Posted August 23, 2011 Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Hey all, sorry about this hassle but because of all the custom code that TWG's forum used it was nearly impossible to update the forum--which I did work on last night but after two hours of dealing with various errors I realized it probably wasn't worth continuing on. It's a shame that it happened. I assumed there was a lot of custom work into it that caused the update issues a long time ago. Thank you for your time and effort on the site. I think that the Sanderson forum was the most active that I saw there. A chance to archive like mycoltbug mentioned would be nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted August 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 Chaos and Spriggan how hard would it be for us to get an archive of the stuff from TWG and put it as an archive on here for future information? It's very easy to have an archive be done. (We did, after all, move our SMF forums to IPB) If Spriggan gives me the forum tables I would like to make an archive of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted August 23, 2011 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2011 I sent you an email about it Sprigg. We could host an archive of the whole forum if you desire. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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