What happened / Why is it probably shutting down?
- On November 11th 2021, I got an email that my dedicated server had been hacked
- One of the services I was running as a VPS on the server had been compromised allowing the attacker to add
the
server to a DDoS attack
- My hosting provider has a zero-tolerance policy, so they have placed the entire dedicated server into
read-only FTP rescue mode
- As we are read-only and FTP, I am unable to mount my partitions or copy them over to a new server
- While DewritoHub did have automatic Database backups, it appears I turned off automatic cloud uploading
during
a maintenance window in 2019 and never re-enabled it (ouch) so the last DB backup is from 2019
- While all the files (maps, images) are intact on cloud, without a recent DB there is not much of a point in
restoring the website, and so I've decided to keep it offline
Where do we go from here?
- I have a support ticket open with my hosting provider to see if I can get SSH access to the server, which
would allow me to download the partition data to a new machine - but looking into it, historically they have
not
done this for customers in similar situations so I don't have much confidence in this approach
- If support allows me SSH access, I'll transfer the data to a new server and resume the DewritoHub service.
So
while all may not be yet lost, it probably is
- I've bundled all the images and map files into a zip file you can find below if you are interested. Perhaps
someone can build an archive, but since none of the metadata from the DB is present, they'll have their work
cutout for 'em
Closing notes
Thank you everyone for helping make DewritoHub what it was. We had a bunch of awesome folks help make the
project
great, ranging from code contributions, to our awesome logo - kick ass maps and amazing services built around
the
site. DewritoHub would not be what it was without all you amazing people using, breaking and contributing to it.
So I sincerely thank everyone who was involved.
Cheers 🍻