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• deep throat on April 22, 2003
  there's more to this story than what you reported. dig deeper
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• John McManigle on April 22, 2003
  For the record, only students with binx accounts had their accounts disabled. Most BEN accounts were unaffected.
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• Jake Summerlin on April 23, 2003
  This is ridiculous. How could something like this happen, its just unthinkable. Ugghh.
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• Chris Mulligan (View Email) on April 23, 2003
  Jake, this is unfortunatly a fact of running a server, particularly with 4000 accounts. When the problem was discovered steps were taken immedietly to secure the system, and for nearly 2 days everything was locked down until it was felt to be safe, and we still feel binx is safe and secure.
  
  It appears that very little damage was done, and no personal information beyond usernames and passwords, names, student IDs and schedules are stored anywhere on binx, and we can't be positive how much information was taken.
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• Joy (View Email) on April 23, 2003
  Actually, this isn't ridiculous at all. Security problems like this happen all the time, even at what may appear to be the safest sites, as the technology hackers used gets more and more advanced. Considering that whoever did this was unsuccessful in gaining any type of control of the server, our binx system operators should be praised for their security measures.
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• finger-pointer on April 23, 2003
  a magnet senior probably did it.
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• meman on April 23, 2003
  I believe that we should fix the problem quickerly!
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• marla buden on April 23, 2003
  THis is ridiculous! you know what else is ridiculous? how much duke sucked this year! they were terrible, how can you support a team like that (cept' dahntay jones, he's a beast, with that huge dunk with the pushup at the end, that was like the dunk of the year man!) but yeah, this is ridiculous!
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• ... on April 24, 2003
  Hahahahahahahaha!
  
  ...
  
  Ahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!
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• Jennifer Collins (View Email) on April 24, 2003
  o my gosh!!!!! at least nothing was hurt....
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• Question on April 24, 2003
  How long will the binx file server be down? I can't access my files using Fetch or my FTP server, and it's much less convenient to use BEN for file storage (even though they're the same files)
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• Jeremy Hoffman (View Email) on April 25, 2003
  KC, I thought you were going to update this story. Nullae morae!
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• 2002 Graduate on April 25, 2003
  Damn dude, I guess there are alot of people who really don't like the school, to the point where they hack...
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• Joy on April 25, 2003
  The binx file server is actually up, but Fetch and other FTP utilities have been denied access. These are less secure than other file transfer options that can be used with binx (i.e.: SCP), and it is currently under review whether they will ever be re-enabled.
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• John McManigle (View Email) on April 25, 2003
  FTP is *never* going to be reenabled on binx. It is a fundamentally insecure protocol. This attack was likely caused when the attacker stole a password from someone using FTP. Using FTP is like shouting your subway across the world.
  
  If you are using windows, check out WinSCP (it's the first result for a google search of that name). If you're using Mac OS X, check out Fugu. Both of these use SCP or SFTP, secure file transfer protocols which binx fully supports.
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• Chris Mulligan (View Email) on April 26, 2003
  FTP is down forever. Due to security holes we've decided that the ready availability of free secure file transfer programs allow us to close off the insecure FTP, and let everyone migrate to SFTP or SCP. If you log into binx with SSH you may view the sysnews on it, number 359 (360 also has some clients listed). If you have questions, feel free to contact sysop@mbhs.edu.
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• ... on April 28, 2003
  "Damn dude, I guess there are alot of people who really don't like the school, to the point where they hack..."
  
  You got that right.
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• Jake Summerlin on May 6, 2003
  Chris, don't make excuses for what can only be described as gross negligence and incompetence. And Joy, it is unthinkable. This is Montgomery Blair High School, not some third world country. And John, what the hell are you talking about? How can you "shout your subway across the world"? I think that is more evidence that the computer elite community looks down on the rest of us, who, like Michael Povtak [phone number deleted by editor] only know how to play the Sims. When you have a group of people that thinks they're that much better than the rest of us and that they are unerrant in their ways, you can only expect a MASSIVE failure as the kind that happened here.
  God Bless America.
  Reply