Lemon 64 & Lemon Amiga

[PeterJ]

I visited Lemon Amiga last night and noticed it was down. I checked this morning and both were still down.

Does anyone know the reasons, or have any news?

[PROSM]

According to lifeschool over on the English Amiga Board, both Lemon sites have been hacked:

SQL injection, LA and L64 sites compromised. The hackers want money to reveal how they did it.

It may take some time to secure the site, but Kim says it can be done given some time.

This is an increasing problem, so I hope eab is secure?

[akeley]

It's really pathetic. I hope it's just some random script kiddies, not a wider trend.

[PeterJ]

Thanks @PROSM,

That's really sad news. I hope Kim manages to fix things.

[firelord]

SQL injection, LA and L64 sites compromised. The hackers want money to reveal how they did it.

Hacking a retro computer site is the equivalent on stealing from the elder/disabled/C64 people...

I have a better idea for those hackers:
They should hack a Yugo Car fan site and demand money...
This should give them more prestige in the hacking community...

Also,these hackers should try and hack something more important -eg a bank/CIA/FBI or -even better- Putin's personal web site...
I'm sure that Putin will be scared and send them money...

[SaNchez]

They were probably spectrumists Commodore must die

[Lee Bee]

Yeah, the hackers might just really hate beige?

Seriously though, the Commodore scene feels like part of the bedrock of the hacking community. Attacking commodore sites is like biting the hand that feeds you.

Or maybe this is Bill Gates feeling threatened by how awesome the retro community is!

[Einar Saukas]

This is terrible.

In the meantime, I updated SC to reference archived pages. For instance try clicking on "Amiga" or "Commodore 64" links here.

[Mousey]

Both sites are back up this morning.

[Matt_B]

There's an update from Kim here.

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=85078

[PeteProdge]

The most interesting part:

Lemon wasn’t specifically targeted. Automated bots are constantly scanning the internet for vulnerabilities on any site they can find. Once these bots identify a vulnerability, human attackers often follow up to exploit it. Unfortunately, our site was one of the many they attempted to breach.

Yeah, I can relate to that, I had an open source platform residing inside a hobby website (one dedicated to an old kids' TV show) and automated hackers got in that way, that was well over a decade ago. The hackers plonked in a lot of black hat SEO links. I got rid of them, so their efforts were all in vane (even if I didn't, they'd barely gain anything from it, Google can spot cheap crappy links like that, it's not the early noughties any more).

I still see automated bots trying to inject black hat SEO links into forms at my workplace. I see it on my Wordpress installations for Reheated Pixels, they always fail.

Anyway, I'm not claiming that's definitely what was going on at Lemon64, hackers will have all kinds of motivations.

[Vampyre]

ZXSR was hacked a couple of years ago. All files locked with the usual text file bollox "send x amount to wherever and we'll unlock. Don't get in touch with anyone, do anything or else the price goes up".

Fortunately all I had to do was wipe all the files from the webspace and re-upload everything, which took all of five minutes. I like to think I really pissed them off with that as (touch wood) they've never come back.

Edit: Yup, a couple of years ago.

[PeterJ]

The Lemon 64 and Lemon Amiga links have been returned to normal.