Rum Server Down April 20 - April 27

Some of you may have been wondering why the Rum site was down for a week from April 20 to April 27. The official line was that I was doing an operating system upgrade but that was not exactly the case. What actually happened was that someone hacked into the system and before they left deleted the entire file system. Despite the fact that all the logs were lost when the file system was destroyed, we were still able to track this person down. I won't say how but I will say that it was through physical evidence and not from a tip off. The attacker was unknown to us and it's still not clear why he targeted the Rum site.

He was able to gain entry to the system by exploiting a bug, recently announced, in one of the system utilities. I was aware of it and intended to patch it but was in no hurry as I didn't perceive the Rum server to be a particularly attractive target for an attack. My mistake and one that I won't make again. We waited until now to talk about what happened because we didn't want to tip off the attacker that he was about to be arrested.

And today he was arrested and his computers seized by the police. Any attacks to the Rum site will be pursued agressively and the perpetrator tracked down and prosecuted. No exceptions.