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back to article Dawkins' website forum hacked to send spam

A website forum run by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins was compromised on Monday. Cybercrooks hacked into the forum to send members an invite to sign up to a warez site. A message on RichardDawkins.net confirms the hack and adds that site admins are working to restore the forum to normal. By Tuesday morning the forum …

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  1. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I just hope...

    ..that some of the spam recipients were bible-thumbing hell-fire and damnation xtians!

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  2. Gareth Holmes
    Joke

    what in the name of god happened there?

    Some militant religious type will probably post this as proof that prayer works :)

    Although perhaps the forum just evolved the ability to send spam?

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Survival of the fittest

    That's the thing about web scripts, they kind of mirror evolution. The fittest ones survive, whilst Neanderthal ones like Matt's Scripts die out. Then, along the way flaws appear in the ones that remain and they either get patched or disappear too.

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  4. Ad Fundum
    Joke

    First!

    Please God let me be the first to be the one to say that this is divine justice ...

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Maybe he can claim on his insurance

    If it covers an Act of god.

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  6. Andy 97

    @Rik Ferguson

    You are a complete genius!

    I suppose you thought that one up yourself.

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Well...

    Apparently phpBB isn't at fault... but with a password scheme that is a vaguely modified salted md5 of the password, it wouldn't take that long to brute force especially if you can muster even a modest botnet.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Revenge?

    God moves in mysterious ways

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To be fair to Dawkins

    if you listen to some of his later interviews, he does accept the possibility, he just thinks it very unlikely.

    Well, God works in mysterious ways it would seem.

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  10. Mr Young
    Pint

    I like philosophy sometimes...

    ...but how did them damn pesky electrons get down my copper cable?

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  11. RW
    Alert

    Forum spamming the coming thing

    The forums of the Scottish Rock Gardening Club have been abused to send spam recently. However, the SRGC doesn't use phpBB, but some other canned forum software.

    Having hammered email to the point where the response rate has dropped to zero, the spammers/scammers/phishers may be turning to other avenues to shove their unwanted messages in front of our eyes.

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  12. Gav
    Boffin

    Not hacked

    The forum wasn't hacked, it simply evolved to a exploit a niche in the environment.

    QED

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  13. Luther Blissett

    Evolution of more/phemes not working in Web 2.0 then?

    So, how much time does it need for Dawkins site to be sending sperm I wonder.

    Enhancement request - bug - or feature?

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  14. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

    Ad Fundum

    Is that the best your god can come up with to express its dissatisfaction with Dawkins and his rationalist ilk?

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  15. Robinson
    Thumb Down

    Yes

    I received some of the said spam. The link to the forums was also hijacked to send users to the spammer's website too!

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  16. TeeCee Gold badge
    Coffee/keyboard

    "Rik Ferguson, a security consultant at Trend Micro...."

    ....owes me a new keyboard.

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  17. Dan Likes Spoons
    Troll

    @"God moves in mysterious ways" etc

    I was going to say that it's nice that He took time out from His busy schedule to answer the prayers of all those people living in poverty and unhappiness (I'm sure they'll all be incredibly happy to know that their wishes to see Dawkin's forum offline have been granted), but then realised I'd probably be feeding the trolls :(

    Sorry!

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  18. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
    Joke

    Bah

    The joke tag that was missing from above. :(

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