Dav Waldron's Blog

So my favourite place on the internet, which also happens to be the place I work, Boards.ie, has been hacked this morning.  Here’s our official word:

Fellow Boards Members,

Today, Thursday 21 Jan 2009 at 11:20 GMT the Boards.ie database was attacked by a source external to Ireland. This triggered our security response policy and as a result we are sending you this warning email.

In this attack, part of the database which includes our members usernames, email addresses and obfuscated passwords was accessed. While our investigations indicate that individual user accounts are not in danger we have taken the step of changing all user passwords.

We also recommend that if you used the same username/email and password on other sites that you change your password there too as a precaution.

What happened:

• This morning our database server was accessed by an unauthorised source.
• We discovered this intrusion and took the site offline.
• As a precaution We contacted the Gardaí, the Data Protection Commissioner and an independent security consultancy.
• We have followed the advice we have received on how to proceed.
• Like all large sites we are regularly the target for disruption and take continual actions to proactively protect your data.  This particular attack was completely unprecedented despite our rigorous security measures and while we have no idea if this data will be used for any malicious reasons, we felt it vital to tell you this immediately.

What you need to know and do:

• If you use the same password on Boards as you do on other services, you should change it on those other services to be safe. Boards passwords are NOT stored in plain text, they are obscured with the standard vBulletin “Hash”. While this provides strong protection, we have altered all passwords on Boards as a precaution and suggest you take this time to allter other similar passwords.
• If you are a subscriber, please be assured, we do NOT store credit card details or any payment details on our servers. Nothing of that nature is held on our site and as a result such data was not compromised.
• We apologise for this inconvenience. We do not want to over stress the problem, however we felt the situation requires full disclosure.

Tom Murphy.

Things to check out:

Boards.ie on Twitter

So there you have it.  It’s been a rather frantic day of writing emails, ringing security people, talking with press people, figuring out the best way to email nearly 300k members, etc, etc.  I can’t even imagine what a day Conor and Ross on our tech team have had, and whilst my own technical knowledge is limited, the scope of this is huge – we have to change everyone’s password and at the same time, perform a forensic analysis on what’s happened.  It’ll be a long night ahead for the guys.

I just want to say a thank you to everyone for their good wishes and support and to those who’ve helped us out over the last few hours of stress.  There’s a long night ahead yet…

Dav

I changed themes cause the old one wasn’t that easy to read.  This one’s not quite right, but I’ll get around to tweaking it sooner or later.

That’s all for now…

So it seems, contrary to popular belief, that Santy thinks I have been a good boy this year. I have received from him 2 most wonderful new toys which move my plans to unleash horrific music upon the world even closer to reality.

Tosh and Pod - a double act to be frightened of...

So what is it?

Well it’s a Toshiba Satellite LD350 – 214 which boasts an Athlon Dual Core CPU, 2 GB of RAM (soon to be upgraded to 4GB when I have some spare cash), 250GB hard drive and a 17″ screen! So it’s “portable desktop” rather than “laptop” territory which is great as I need to be able to take it to and from practice etc.

On top of that we have the Line 6 Pod X3. This is a guitar (and vocal!) multi-effects processing unit that can replicate the sound of many different amps, cabs, microphones and of course, effects units. It also acts as a MIDI device when connected via USB into a computer and after some fiddling around with stuff this afternoon, I managed to get it correctly installed on the Tosh.

Next remaining step is to install some manner of recording software and learning how the frak the Pod works I also need to get some manner of backpack or bag to carry both devices, their power supplies, cables, etc. Have had a few recommendations already in that regard, so no worries.

My current problems are two-fold:
1) my flat is WAY too small to set this stuff up in it.
2) my decent guitars are all out in storage since the closure of the BatCave.

So I’d already planned on moving house anyway, so that’s grand, all that remains is getting to the storage place and grabbing my axes.

Fun times ahead

Some of you are aware of a place I call the Bat Cave.  Some of you have even visited!  It’s where J-Cloth practices, or should I say practised…

The lads who own the place are closing the doors.   They’ve apparently been hit with a big rates bill that they just can’t afford and so have decided to wind the company down.  We’re all completely gutted.  The BatCave was a second home to most of us.  The studio bit we spent a long weekend (not to mention a fair whack of money) soundproofing and you could hear nothing outside the building because of that.  We often worked out there will 3 or 4 am and it bothered nobody.

Just last week we had got all our recording setup figured out after several long weeks of tweaking this and that and re-wiring both the sound desk and the ProTools PC attached to the DigiDesign desk.   I will now have to spend Wednesday (when I get back from the States) clearing my gear out of the Cave and trying to squeeze as much as possible into my tiny flat. I have my big amp, my effects board + pedals, 3 guitars, a computer, various books and DVDs (we have an extensive library built up over the last year).   We also have to find place for our PA, 2 bass-bins, 2 speakers, all the cabling that goes with that, 4 MASSIVE stage curtains that are used for sound proofing on the walls, various bits of furniture (tables, desks, couches), a TV, some computer monitors, another 2 PCs, all sorts of stage equipment odds and ends, etc, etc – the list goes on and on…

Miserable doesn’t even begin to come close to describing how I feel about this whole thing, but I’m trying not to let it ruin my holiday.

So if anyone knows of a warehouse/big room somewhere in the Dublin area that we could rent, please let me know.  As it stands, we have 24/7 access to this place which suits us well, so that’d be ideal, but not completely essential.  It has to be somewhere that’ll just be us though.  A shared studio is too expensive and restrictive.

I hate when shit like this happens

On Thursday night last, I was at the Boards.ie Windows 7 launch event.  First of all, big thanks to Microsoft and Edleman PR for having us and for our free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate.  I’ve been using Win7 since RC1 came out in June and I’m quite happy with it.  I’d definitely recommend making the switch if you’re a Fista user and if your hardware’s a bit older, it still seems to run pretty well on low-end tech (they had it running pretty smoothly on NetBooks with Atoms and 1GB of RAM which is decent).  We got to see the whole thing in action and also how the inter-connectivity of a multi-device house might work.  Will, one of their Dev team, had a great presentation showing off some of the interface features (multi-touch looks good) and had a machine running Home Server as well as an XBox 360.  He demoed how it all came together and shared libraries with a lot of ease.  It’s a good system and for a lot of people, it’ll work very well.  I’m considering setting something like this up at home myself – Microsoft’s plan seems to involve family licences at a reduced rate, but I’m not sure if Home Server is included in this – I sense some research ahead!

The long and the short of it is, I recommend an upgrade to Windows 7 to anyone who’s a Windows user.

More importantly though, after the presentations, @thaedydal, @cloudsteph, @darraghdoyle and @doneganland were in the reception area of Edleman’s office where they have photos on the wall of some of their various campaigns.  They included this one:

Promo shot in Edleman PR of Twink

As we were looking at it, I commented that My mother is quite friendly with Maxi and knows her from her Maxi, Dick and Twink days, so she’d know the other two members of the group too.  Someone (I honestly can’t remember who) made some comment which sparked a conversation about whether or not my mother would take any shite from Twink – I know for a fact that she wouldn’t as she wouldn’t take any shite from anyone!

So I ask you dear readers to please answer my first ever poll which is appearing in the side bar there on the right and ask yourself – “Would my ma take shite from Twink?”