OCR GOT HAXXORED!

Back in 2005, OCR became the victim of someone hacking into the site, and having their way with it. While it's been widely considered to have been the work of a poster who went by the name Seifer, I don't believe anything's been proven. Regardless, what part of this hack involved, was taking normal everyday words, and replacing them with "techno" words and phrases (phrases that Seifer liked to make jokes with oddly enough). Words like "the" became "BOOM HISS BOOM HISS", "and" became "FOUR ON THE FLOOR LETS DANCE 'E' GLOWSTICKS HOORAY", "a" became "CLAP CLAP CLAP", and more. The hacker in question also renamed various forums, and made threads that were not the norm for OCR's front page.

Here's some examples of what the end result looked like...

 

While it wasn't up for very long, it was there long enough for regular visitors to the site to wonder just what the hell was going on, and for the hacker to send out some E-mails and private messages telling people that "techno sucks". Eventually, the site was cleaned up, and the security hole in phpBB that the hacker used, closed. However, some damage had been done to the site's image, and as such, djp sent out an E-mail apologizing for what had happened. The E-mail read as follows...

 

The following is an email sent to you by an administrator of "ocremix". If this message is spam, contains abusive or other
comments you find offensive please contact the webmaster of the board at the following address:

creator@overclocked.org

Include this full email (particularly the headers).

Message sent to you follows:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As many of you have noted, two emails were sent out from OverClocked ReMix's forum account early this morning which linked
to a website and/or issued this message:

"techno music sucks"

These messages were the result of our PHPBB-based forums being compromised using an exploit/hack uncovered in the last
couple weeks. Needless to say, it is not the stated position of OCR that techno in any way "sucks", and we apologize for
these unsolicited, inappropriate messages.

Measures have been taken not only to patch PHPBB but also to further protect its administrative functionality from future
would-be "hackers" sending similar messages.

Though it is unlikely that database information was retrieved or individual accounts compromised, we still recommend
changing your password by accessing your profile at http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/.

Please do not reply directly to this email.

If you have questions about the forum compromise or this email, please inquire on the (restored) forums at
http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=53608.

Finally, to those who have requested to be removed from this "list" - there is no OCR mailing list per se, only the list
of users who have registered on the forums. For administrative purposes, this list can be necessary to inform everyone of
issues just like this one, and there is no built-in way to opt out. However, messages are sent extremely infrequently, and
only when the information is universally applicable and vital.

In other words: we got "hacked" by some losers, two bogus emails were sent to all forum members, the problem's been fixed,
we recommend changing your password, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

Also, techno doesn't suck.

Thanks,

David Lloyd (djpretzel)

 

And so ended the time OCR was taken for ride by hacker.

Thanks to Legion303 for the E-mail, and to Doulifée for the first image.

-- The Coop