Mailing List Archive

For some reason, the Wikimedia mailing lists have a notorious reputation of not liking Yahoo email addresses. *shrugs*
Anyway, the provider is still down/appears dead. It is seriously looking like we may have lost another free MediaWiki host, since usually when Referata goes down its only for an hour or two, usually even less.
-- Amanda


On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 5:07 PM, Martin Urbanec <martin.urbanec@wikimedia.cz> wrote:

Hi Amanda, 
for your information, all your emails are going to spam on my end. Might not affect just me ;). 
Best regards, 
Martin Urbanec
On Sun, 5 May 2019 at 19:24, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hey everyone,
Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (http://referata.com) - it seems to have died or something, as no site hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main "meta" website itself is accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is the lead sysadmin of the service. If we have indeed lost another free MediaWiki host, I will definitely say that it is a major setback and has the potential to impact many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have either died, had a change of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have become pay-only services.
-- Amanda
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Oh yeah, that's probably because the list sends on your behalf, and yahoo
has very strict policy on who can do that :(.

From my point of view, it looks it was hacked by an individual/group called
Delicious. But you probably see the same thing there :)).

Martin

On Sun, 5 May 2019 at 23:19, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

> For some reason, the Wikimedia mailing lists have a notorious reputation
> of not liking Yahoo email addresses. *shrugs*
>
> Anyway, the provider is still down/appears dead. It is seriously looking
> like we may have lost another free MediaWiki host, since usually when
> Referata goes down its only for an hour or two, usually even less.
>
> -- Amanda
>
> On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 5:07 PM, Martin Urbanec <
> martin.urbanec@wikimedia.cz> wrote:
>
> Hi Amanda,
>
> for your information, all your emails are going to spam on my end. Might
> not affect just me ;).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Martin Urbanec
>
> On Sun, 5 May 2019 at 19:24, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
> Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (
> http://referata.com) - it seems to have died or something, as no site
> hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main "meta" website itself is
> accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is the lead sysadmin of the
> service. If we have indeed lost another free MediaWiki host, I will
> definitely say that it is a major setback and has the potential to impact
> many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have either died, had a change
> of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have become pay-only services.
> -- Amanda
>
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> To unsubscribe, go to:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>
>
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Well, now someone attempted to maliciously unsubscribe me from the mailing list, and the IP address who performed the action matches that of the IP address displayed in the lower right hand corner of the "Hacked by" screen when attempting to access Referata. (Never noticed that until now).
The alleged hacker has outed themselves and has posted their IP publicly in their Hacked message. I also note that the username of the alleged hacker listed matches that of a previous username (before global rename) of a now globally-locked and enwiki-banned WMF user.
-- Amanda


On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 5:37 PM, Martin Urbanec <martin.urbanec@wikimedia.cz> wrote:

Oh yeah, that's probably because the list sends on your behalf, and yahoo has very strict policy on who can do that :(. 
From my point of view, it looks it was hacked by an individual/group called Delicious. But you probably see the same thing there :)). 
Martin
On Sun, 5 May 2019 at 23:19, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

For some reason, the Wikimedia mailing lists have a notorious reputation of not liking Yahoo email addresses. *shrugs*
Anyway, the provider is still down/appears dead. It is seriously looking like we may have lost another free MediaWiki host, since usually when Referata goes down its only for an hour or two, usually even less.
-- Amanda


On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 5:07 PM, Martin Urbanec <martin.urbanec@wikimedia.cz> wrote:

Hi Amanda, 
for your information, all your emails are going to spam on my end. Might not affect just me ;). 
Best regards, 
Martin Urbanec
On Sun, 5 May 2019 at 19:24, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hey everyone,
Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (http://referata.com) - it seems to have died or something, as no site hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main "meta" website itself is accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is the lead sysadmin of the service. If we have indeed lost another free MediaWiki host, I will definitely say that it is a major setback and has the potential to impact many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have either died, had a change of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have become pay-only services.
-- Amanda
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Hi Amanda,

Sorry about that. Yes, Referata is currently hacked, and has been hacked
repeatedly by someone in the last few days. No, Referata is not going away.
I had hoped this problem could have been fixed I already, but I'm hoping to
get it fixed soon, and to get rid of whatever security vulnerability
they're currently exploiting.

-Yaron

On Sun, May 5, 2019, 1:23 PM Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (
> http://referata.com <http://referata.com)>) - it seems to have died or
> something, as no site hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main
> "meta" website itself is accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is
> the lead sysadmin of the service. If we have indeed lost another free
> MediaWiki host, I will definitely say that it is a major setback and has
> the potential to impact many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have
> either died, had a change of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have
> become pay-only services.
>
> -- Amanda
>
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Hi Yaron,
It appears that the latest hack has quoted something from the Referata Meta frequently asked questions regarding security (or lack thereof) as their "justification" for hacking, so that may be something that needs to be cleaned up.
Also, I do know who the current hacker is. At least from a non-sysadmin perspective, when attempting to access Referata, an IP address is visible in the lower right hand corner of the "Hacked by Delicious" message. There is a string of capital letters in front of the IP address that just looks like some random hash code, but in actuality is the former username (from before a global rename) of a now-globally locked and enwiki-banned WMF user.
Additionally, I noticed that a user account by the name of "BEWARE HACKER" with exclamation points on either side had been created on the Referata main site/Meta wiki. I've noticed that the main site/Meta Wiki has virtually been abandoned and as a result heavily spammed - you might want to take a good look through the 30 day-500 changes recent changes display once the wiki is up again and hand out some blocks/perform some deletions.
-- Amanda


On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:05 PM, Yaron Koren <yaron@wikiworks.com> wrote:

Hi Amanda,
Sorry about that. Yes, Referata is currently hacked, and has been hacked repeatedly by someone in the last few days. No, Referata is not going away. I had hoped this problem could have been fixed I already, but I'm hoping to get it fixed soon, and to get rid of whatever security vulnerability they're currently exploiting.
-Yaron
On Sun, May 5, 2019, 1:23 PM Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hey everyone,
Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (http://referata.com) - it seems to have died or something, as no site hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main "meta" website itself is accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is the lead sysadmin of the service. If we have indeed lost another free MediaWiki host, I will definitely say that it is a major setback and has the potential to impact many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have either died, had a change of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have become pay-only services.
-- Amanda



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Hello,
Referata is still down/hacked/locked/not working.
I've looked into the issue more, and it appears that my initial conclusion that the hacker was a globally locked and enwiki-banned WMF user was incorrect. The hacker in question exposed the personal information of said banned user, and I thought that they had outed themselves. My bad.
I did dig around a bit though trying to figure out who or what "Delicious" was... the only thing that I found was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website) but I would highly doubt that there's any connection to that since Referata and that website don't appear to be even remotely similar.
-- Amanda


On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:36 PM, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi Yaron,
It appears that the latest hack has quoted something from the Referata Meta frequently asked questions regarding security (or lack thereof) as their "justification" for hacking, so that may be something that needs to be cleaned up.
Also, I do know who the current hacker is. At least from a non-sysadmin perspective, when attempting to access Referata, an IP address is visible in the lower right hand corner of the "Hacked by Delicious" message. There is a string of capital letters in front of the IP address that just looks like some random hash code, but in actuality is the former username (from before a global rename) of a now-globally locked and enwiki-banned WMF user.
Additionally, I noticed that a user account by the name of "BEWARE HACKER" with exclamation points on either side had been created on the Referata main site/Meta wiki. I've noticed that the main site/Meta Wiki has virtually been abandoned and as a result heavily spammed - you might want to take a good look through the 30 day-500 changes recent changes display once the wiki is up again and hand out some blocks/perform some deletions.
-- Amanda


On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:05 PM, Yaron Koren <yaron@wikiworks.com> wrote:

Hi Amanda,
Sorry about that. Yes, Referata is currently hacked, and has been hacked repeatedly by someone in the last few days. No, Referata is not going away. I had hoped this problem could have been fixed I already, but I'm hoping to get it fixed soon, and to get rid of whatever security vulnerability they're currently exploiting.
-Yaron
On Sun, May 5, 2019, 1:23 PM Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hey everyone,
Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (http://referata.com) - it seems to have died or something, as no site hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main "meta" website itself is accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is the lead sysadmin of the service. If we have indeed lost another free MediaWiki host, I will definitely say that it is a major setback and has the potential to impact many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have either died, had a change of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have become pay-only services.
-- Amanda






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Hi,

The Referata problems were due to a security leak that has now been
identified and fixed. (It was not in MediaWiki itself, but rather in the
Site Settings extension - which I believe is only used on Referata,
fortunately.) There are still some problems, like wikis missing their
logos, but in general the running of the wiki farm is now back to normal, I
am very relieved to say.

-Yaron

On Sun, May 12, 2019 at 2:14 PM Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> Referata is still down/hacked/locked/not working.
> I've looked into the issue more, and it appears that my initial conclusion
> that the hacker was a globally locked and enwiki-banned WMF user was
> incorrect. The hacker in question exposed the personal information of said
> banned user, and I thought that they had outed themselves. My bad.
> I did dig around a bit though trying to figure out who or what "Delicious"
> was... the only thing that I found was
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website) but I would highly
> doubt that there's any connection to that since Referata and that website
> don't appear to be even remotely similar.
> -- Amanda
>
>
> On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:36 PM, Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Yaron,
> It appears that the latest hack has quoted something from the Referata
> Meta frequently asked questions regarding security (or lack thereof) as
> their "justification" for hacking, so that may be something that needs to
> be cleaned up.
> Also, I do know who the current hacker is. At least from a non-sysadmin
> perspective, when attempting to access Referata, an IP address is visible
> in the lower right hand corner of the "Hacked by Delicious" message. There
> is a string of capital letters in front of the IP address that just looks
> like some random hash code, but in actuality is the former username (from
> before a global rename) of a now-globally locked and enwiki-banned WMF user.
> Additionally, I noticed that a user account by the name of "BEWARE HACKER"
> with exclamation points on either side had been created on the Referata
> main site/Meta wiki. I've noticed that the main site/Meta Wiki has
> virtually been abandoned and as a result heavily spammed - you might want
> to take a good look through the 30 day-500 changes recent changes display
> once the wiki is up again and hand out some blocks/perform some deletions.
> -- Amanda
>
>
> On Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:05 PM, Yaron Koren <yaron@wikiworks.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Amanda,
> Sorry about that. Yes, Referata is currently hacked, and has been hacked
> repeatedly by someone in the last few days. No, Referata is not going away.
> I had hoped this problem could have been fixed I already, but I'm hoping to
> get it fixed soon, and to get rid of whatever security vulnerability
> they're currently exploiting.
> -Yaron
> On Sun, May 5, 2019, 1:23 PM Amanda Quad <amandaquad@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
> Does anyone know what happened to the Referata MediaWiki hosting service (
> http://referata.com) - it seems to have died or something, as no site
> hosted under Referata's domain name, nor the main "meta" website itself is
> accessible. CC'ing Yaron Koren who I believe is the lead sysadmin of the
> service. If we have indeed lost another free MediaWiki host, I will
> definitely say that it is a major setback and has the potential to impact
> many poeple. Too many free MediaWiki hosts have either died, had a change
> of management and are now ad-spammed, and/or have become pay-only services.
> -- Amanda
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> MediaWiki-l mailing list
> To unsubscribe, go to:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
>


--
WikiWorks · MediaWiki Consulting · http://wikiworks.com
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