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Forums - Website Topics - VGChartz got attacked [IMPORTANT]

coolbeans on 08 October 2022
VersusEvil said:

Serious question but what's stopping this happening again?

Everyone becoming a Supp- oh wait I already did that bit.



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Kakadu18 on 08 October 2022
VersusEvil said:

Serious question but what's stopping this happening again? What's even the point of commenting on this site anymore if there's a chance anything I write, any thread a create just disappears because someone was angry he got banned.

You're falling into his trap. That's what he wanted. For the site to die.



trunkswd on 08 October 2022
VersusEvil said:

Serious question but what's stopping this happening again? What's even the point of commenting on this site anymore if there's a chance anything I write, any thread a create just disappears because someone was angry he got banned.

As Ryuu pointed out the hacker only gained access to Talon's account (and not the backend) and used the ability of a head mod to remove posts. That ability has now been removed. So even if a person is permabanned their posts will remain on the site. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Bluesky and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

mZuzek on 11 October 2022

So, any updates on recovering the deleted posts? I've been a bit anxious... don't wanna lose all those big results threads.



my top 40 games

trunkswd on 12 October 2022
mZuzek said:

So, any updates on recovering the deleted posts? I've been a bit anxious... don't wanna lose all those big results threads.

We are waiting to hear back from JLauro and Talonman. Once we have an update we will let everyone know. But our hope is we can back date to last (non-corrupted) backup of the site and bring over everything posted since that backup or to bring everything over from said backup to the current site. I think the articles and Game DB are separate from the forums and whatever the plan ends up being won't be affected by it and remain unchanged. 

I can say that the mod tool that deletes people's posts has been removed, so this will (hopefully) never happen again. 

For now Bandorr can manually bring back deleted posts that have been edited at least once. The big issue is he has to do it one post at a time. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Bluesky and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

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SegaHeart on 14 October 2022

I prefer the old threads making new ones is not worth it.



trunkswd on 15 October 2022

We hadn't noticed the people wrongly banned lost VG$ 2,000. We have given everyone affected the VG$ 2,000 back, plus an extra 2,000 as an apology for all the issues. 



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Bluesky and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

SegaHeart on 15 October 2022
trunkswd said:

We hadn't noticed the people wrongly banned lost VG$ 2,000. We have given everyone affected the VG$ 2,000 back, plus an extra 2,000 as an apology for all the issues. 

I'm new to the Vg$ what can I spend on this?



trunkswd on 15 October 2022
SegaHeart said:
trunkswd said:

We hadn't noticed the people wrongly banned lost VG$ 2,000. We have given everyone affected the VG$ 2,000 back, plus an extra 2,000 as an apology for all the issues. 

I'm new to the Vg$ what can I spend on this?

You can use them to make bets in the prediction league and some threads have bets. You can also purchase badges and other stuff in the VG$ Store. Go to this link - https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/settings/preferences/ - and click on "VG$ Store"



VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Bluesky and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.

trunkswd on 17 October 2022
Darwinianevolution said:

As many of you can clearly see, the front page has been vandalised with indecent stuff. The keypoints here are:

- Talon's account was compromised.
- We've contacted the Admin's.
- We've mitigated the issue slightly by removing Talon's permissions and banning him.
- The site will have to be backdated.
- Passwords may have to be reset. [IMPORTANT]
- We don't know the full extent of the damage yet.

The staff is doing everything they can right now, so for now the best course of action is to keep calm.

Edit by @trunkswd 

  • We are working on trying to restore everyone's accounts and posts that were "Deleted." Anything deleted is hidden and should not be completely removed. The team is trying to find where everything is hidden to restore it. 
  • Passwords from what I've been told should be safe, but I would change your password just in case. 
  • Anyone who had their "Supporter" removed will get it back once we get everything sorted. 

Edit by @Machina 

  • Everyone banned by the hacker has been unbanned (including my own account!), and a bug that was preventing newly unbanned people from properly viewing the website has been resolved by Bandorr. Everyone should now be able to use the site as before.
  • The posts of those who were banned are still missing; we're hoping to resolve that, but that fix is probably gonna take more time.
  • All Supporters at the time of the hack (and who had it removed), have had their Supporter status returned. The dates for expiration are a placeholder until Trucks and I have time to go over them in more detail. If I missed anyone out let me know!

Edit #2 by @Machina 

  • Restoring everyone's posts is going to be much harder than anticipated because the most recent back-ups are corrupted. Ryuu estimates there are 750,000 missing posts. We have a reliable back-up from two years ago that we're going to use to restore most (around 580,000) of those missing posts (while of course saving any currently on the site). We're still brainstorming methods to retrieve the ones posted between the date of the last good back-up and the date of the mass deletion.
  • It shouldn't be possible for this to ever happen again - the Admin tool he used to delete posts has been removed from the website entirely, and JLauro has fixed the issue that was causing the back-ups to corrupt.
  • The VG$2,000 removed from each account for being banned has been restored, plus an extra VG$2,000 has been added for the inconvenience.

As you can all see Machina has provided an update in the OP. All "deleted" posts haven't actually been deleted, but some data is missing from them such as what thread they belonged in and the user who posted them. The first step is to restore all posts from the last reliable back-up from two years ago, which will bring back about 580,000 of the 750,000 missing posts. The second step in restoring all the other posts from those affected is something we are still working to figure out. 

As Machina noted, the ability to "delete" posts has been completely removed from Admin tools, so this shouldn't happen again in the future. And JLauro has fixed the issue that caused back-ups to be corrupted. 

Last edited by trunkswd - on 17 October 2022

VGChartz Sales Analyst and Writer - William D'Angelo - I stream on Twitch and have my own YouTube. Follow me on Bluesky and Threads.

I post and adjust the VGChartz hardware estimates, with help from Machina.

Writer of the Sales Comparison | Monthly Hardware Breakdown | Monthly Sales Analysis | Marketshare Features, as well as daily news on the Video Game Industry.