STATEMENT FROM THE ATLAS FORUM MODERATION TEAM
Last week, many of you reported that people had tried to access your accounts on Atlas. Many of you received a ‘re-set’ e-mail. Many of these e-mails contained an I.P address identifying a proxy server.
Bacon King’s account was the source of the leaks from the Moderator’s Corner. Dave Leip was able to identify from code who had accessed the specific topics uploaded onto a blog that was linked offsite. Bacon King was suspended as a moderator pending investigation. The I.P address that Bacon King’s account last used revealed several matches. First of all, it was not an I.P linked to Bacon King, proving that his account was compromised. Secondly it was a similar I.P to the attempts to log onto other people’s accounts and thirdly, it’s usage was linked to that of a poster on Atlas Forum.
We have identified the account associated with the leaked I.P. The person owning that account has an account at another forum that shares many posters in common with Atlas Forum. It appears that information in common to Atlas Forum and this other forum, such as username and password was used to breach basic security protections on the Atlas Forum. That breach then resulted in attempts to change the password of a number of users and caused the messages some of you received.
Security at user forums can be breached in ways unknown to the user. One of the simplest defences is to use different passwords for each forum you participate in.
If you use the same password at another forum, especially with the same username, we strongly recommend that you change your password at the Atlas Forum
Thank you.
You can just say Dark Atlas or AAD. No need to make this more confusing.
Also, most people know this but for the few without AAD accounts, the "specific topics" vaguely referenced in this moderator statement that were uploaded onto the blogs were in fact topics from the Mod board itself. 50+ topics from the Mod board over the years were available to all of us.
