Originally Posted by Mike Rainbird
Chip,
There are only two alternatives as I see it:
1. Simon is the PF hacker.
2. Someone hates Simon enough to attempt to convince people by the actions carried out by the hacker, that Simon is responsible.
The reason I don't believe it to be the latter is that actions have been taken against certain people where only Simon and a few others are aware of the fall-out between these people.
As much as I know that even you are capable of doing it technically, the people that have been targeted wouldn't fit your profile / nature. However, given your friendship with Simon, it certainly would not suprise me to learn that you passed on the information of how to hack the board on to him - if he needed that information
. I do not believe it is you though.
All the evidence points one way and one way only. As you know I am a very logical person and if you were able to offer an explanation that fitted all the circumstantial evidence and pointed in a different direction, then I would quite happily investigate it further. Simply saying you don't believe it to be him, when everything fits doesn't make sense to me. If you could provide some alternative reasoning, then that would help me see where you're coming from
.
Mike.
Ive not ever discussed with Simon or anyone else the way to hack PHP forums, you are correct thats its something that I have a reasonable understanding of, as a result of the fact im a PHP forum admin, and am a professional software engineer / programmer, including having done some security work on websites, but for the record, I dont actually know the exploit that is being used currently, as its not something I have looked into recently myself anyway.
When I did so before, it was because i was setting up a PHP forum at the time, and wanted to be sure I had plugged all the known security holes at that point in time, in doing so I (and my friend who I had been getting info off as he bothers to keep up to date with such things) thought I would check passionford for the same "holes" as I didnt want someone else to come along and do so malicously in the future (if holes are there, its inevitable they WILL be found), so I thought it better that a "friendly hacker" found the faults and highlighted them, than someone doing the sort of stuff that has happened recently.
Thats was my ONLY motivation for doing so, to increase the security of the forum, discussing its flaws with someone else (simon or anyone else) would be achieving exactly the opposite ofthat aim, so it should be very easy to see why I would keep those "trade secrets" to myself given my demonstated concern for PF security.
With regards to who the hacker is, I agree with you that it seems likely it is Simon, but I dont agree with you that there is enough circumstantial evidence to act on, Im sure we have all been wrong about various things that we think are likely at points in our life.
With regards to the comment about "given your friendship with Simon"
I suspect you are somewhat misguided about that one, I dont really have a friendship with Simon TBH, Ive only ever met him a couple of times, have never really spoken to him on the phone at any great length, my only real interaction with him has just been purely on this forum, and even then Ive not really spoken to him a great deal, so I consider him more an an aquaintance than a friend really anyway, I consider you a friend more than I consider Simon to be one for example as I have spent a lot more time chatting to you than I ever have to Simon.
Im sure IB already know what they need to do in order to prevent the hacking from continuing, but if they wish me to attempt to teach my grandma to suck eggs they are welcome to PM me for advice on what actions they should take with regards to securing the site.