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> our most recent backup dates back to June 24 2012 And therein lies the problem of disaster recovery. Even if you have a catastrophic bug, you should not be l

> our most recent backup dates back to June 24 2012 And therein lies the problem of disaster recovery. Even if you have a catastrophic bug, you should not be losing 6 months of data.

yk 14y ago
They state that the attack possibly occurred the next day, so it is possible that the attacker did disable backups.
- Trezoid 14y ago
  Check those dates more closely ;) It was exactly 31 days later, but still on a reasonable schedule for a monthly backup. Either the backups where disabled or the staff don't trust the backups they do have (though that seems unlikely, given that it would allow them to recover the content offline without having to execute any of the backing code)
- eksith 14y ago
  This is why write-only backups aren't just a good idea; like gravity, it's the law. I know funding for these things are on a shoestring budget, but there should have been an external service to ensure backups are being made on a regular basis. Or else, you don't know something's wrong until something's really, really wrong.
bobsy 14y ago
The people who maintain this are volunteers right? If so there shouldn't be too much blame. There isn't enough information. I would have thought sometime between June and January someone would have looked to see if back ups were being made and if the size of the back ups were consistent with the amount of data stored on the website even if they weren't properly checking that back ups were valid. I would expect from this someone has now been assigned to checking that regular back ups are stored and are correct. I have been a part of a few communities were back ups were supposedly being taken but no one was given the responsibility for ensuring they were correct or even actually being made. Once or twice a moderator rampage has lead to a lot of lost data. I would expect this is one of the key lessons they have learned from this.
PhilipA 14y ago
I will try to recover it with http://recovermywebsite.com http://recovermywebsite.com (I might get something a bit newer). Anyone who knows who I can contact with the download when I am done?

> our most recent backup dates back to June 24 2012 And therein lies the problem of disaster recovery. Even if you have a catastrophic bug, you should not be losing 6 months of data.

yk 14y ago

They state that the attack possibly occurred the next day, so it is possible that the attacker did disable backups.

Trezoid 14y ago
Check those dates more closely ;) It was exactly 31 days later, but still on a reasonable schedule for a monthly backup. Either the backups where disabled or the staff don't trust the backups they do have (though that seems unlikely, given that it would allow them to recover the content offline without having to execute any of the backing code)
eksith 14y ago
This is why write-only backups aren't just a good idea; like gravity, it's the law. I know funding for these things are on a shoestring budget, but there should have been an external service to ensure backups are being made on a regular basis. Or else, you don't know something's wrong until something's really, really wrong.

bobsy 14y ago

The people who maintain this are volunteers right? If so there shouldn't be too much blame. There isn't enough information. I would have thought sometime between June and January someone would have looked to see if back ups were being made and if the size of the back ups were consistent with the amount of data stored on the website even if they weren't properly checking that back ups were valid. I would expect from this someone has now been assigned to checking that regular back ups are stored and are correct. I have been a part of a few communities were back ups were supposedly being taken but no one was given the responsibility for ensuring they were correct or even actually being made. Once or twice a moderator rampage has lead to a lot of lost data. I would expect this is one of the key lessons they have learned from this.

PhilipA 14y ago

I will try to recover it with http://recovermywebsite.com http://recovermywebsite.com (I might get something a bit newer). Anyone who knows who I can contact with the download when I am done?