Notification of Security Breach of Bulbagarden Forums Server

[Archaic]

Hello everyone,

Earlier this week, an intruder gained access to two staff accounts on Bulbapedia. That incident was quickly resolved, with the intruder quickly locked out of those accounts and all damage they did on the wiki being reverted. We do not believe at this stage that there is any continuing risk to Bulbapedia or to wiki users. That's not what I'm here to talk to you about however.

In our investigation of that particular incident with Bulbapedia, we uncovered evidence that our forums server (which is its own separate server from our wiki setup) had suffered a breach. At this point in time, we believe the Oekaki was the initial vector of attack. Though the Oekaki was running a current version of the Wacintaki Poteto software, the developer of that software has recently indicated that it is unlikely to receive further updates going forward, and as a result we were intending to decommission the Oekaki after New Year's. In light of its role in this incident, we have taken the Oekaki offline permanently. We have taken backups of all images posted to the Oekaki, and will be arranging a way for users of our Oekaki to download these in the near future.

To ensure user security, we will be decommissioning the current forums server and make a fresh start. While I say fresh start, I can reassure you that forums account and post data will not be lost in this process. However all blogs and social groups will be lost. While we will retain a backup copy of the current forums database with all that content, going through that to recover information would be time consuming, so I'd suggest you take a backup of anything there that you can't live without ASAP. And yes, there will be a mandatory password reset to go along with that. This server refresh was something we already had plans to do in mid-to-late November anyway, so this is simply us accelerating that process.

I will have more information for you all within 24 hours.

 

[Rainami]

sweet, now all my crappy old blogs can finally go away. Was too traumatizing to go delete them myself, because that would involve actually looking at all of them. Nasty.

albums should be fine, right?

 

[Archaic]

sweet, now all my crappy old blogs can finally go away. Was too traumatizing to go delete them myself, because that would involve actually looking at all of them. Nasty.

albums should be fine, right?

Those will most likely be vanishing too, sorry.

One of the reasons we'd already been planning a forums refresh was due to incidents earlier this year involving DCMA claims, where some companies targeted us because some spam posts in blogs (especially blog page templates)/open focus groups/galleries/etc were hurting their website SEO (i.e. Because Bulba was so much more massive than their own websites, these spam posts were coming up higher in Google searches for their brand name than their own website). This refresh helps us make sure all that sort of thing is flushed away.

 

[Dr. Buni]

I honestly wouldn't mind posts being lost, should it be necessary. The only thing I am rather attached to is my join date, as vain as this might sound.

Anyways, thanks for explaining the situation to us, Archaic!

 

[Missingno. Master]

Going through my blog now to find anything that might be worth preserving. And as I'm doing so, I'm starting to think wiping the blogs clean might not be such a bad thing, at least in my case. That said, I remember the days when DracoMan's blog was updated daily with funny jokes and the like, it saddens me to think I'll never be able to go through all of those again... Well, I guess I could do so now, though.

 

[Enzap]

Will sogros still be an option afterward, or are we losing the ability to make them in addition to losing their content?

 

[System Error]

Before I drive myself insane trying to save all my albums, is there any batch way or otherwise fast method of backing up everything I ever uploaded? Because it would really suck to have to do it all by hand! EDIT: Also more importantly, will the albums themselves be exploding, or all the uploaded images? This is relevant for art topics and such for anyone who uploaded here, like me.

Also needless to say but a bit less importantly, RIP quadruple digit blog entries.

 

[Figgles]

Will VMs be swept away as well, or will they stay put?

 

[Soulmaster]

Going off of SE's question, not just for albums but blogs, social groups, etc. Are there good ways to just batch download them? Kinda like the PM download(which will those disappear also, as well as user notes?)

 

[Zeb]

I don't think there's much in my blogs I will miss. But I honestly can't be bothered looking through 200-something blogs anyway so rip. And if the blogs will be disappearing it saves me starting any new blog series until the new server is up, so I'm glad I checked this thread.

I think the biggest loss for me will be not being able to go back and read some of Ghetsis-Dennis old stupid blogs from back in 2012-ish lmao. Ah the memories.

I'm fine with losing social groups because I've had some groups that I'm essentially stuck in and can't leave because I can't access the group when its name was changed.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Will VMs be swept away as well, or will they stay put?

Seconded, I know I have some story reviews I would want to dig out and save if they won't

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

Tis a shame. I'm going to miss wasting time reading blogs from way back when. =( Good thing I have nothing downloaded and saved here.

 

[Snowy]

Do you have a timeframe for this?

Will VMs be swept away as well, or will they stay put?

Seconded, I know I have some story reviews I would want to dig out and save if they won't

My advice is to dig them out and save them regardless

 

[Rainami]

just finished saving like all 110 of my avatars. Nyow to save my banners...

Also needless to say but a bit less importantly, RIP quadruple digit blog entries.

one of the very first things I thought when I saw this thread was "poor system error"

 

[Archaic]

To clarify, here is what you can expect to stay and go with this refresh.

What will be retained:
Threads and Posts
Post Edit History
Polls (i.e. Who voted for what and poll results)
Private Messages
Visitor Messages (a.k.a. Profile Comments)
Avatars
Buddy & Ignore Lists
Attachments
Infraction History

What may be recoverable if required, but which will not be retained for the refreshed forum:
Blog posts
Social group posts
Albums and images (though images from galleries that were also used as attachments should still be saved as attachments on the posts they were used on)

What is not going to be completely there at first:
All of the Forum skins (it'll take us a while to fully rebuild these)

 

[PaulTheProtist]

I have one question: Although the current blogs and social groups are going, will we be able to create new ones after the update?

 

[ArvAl]

That's a relief. I thought Blogs and Social Groupies got wiped permanently without recovery. Still, what worries me most is how long the Skins shall be restored in full. It doesn't gonna look good soon.

 

[Dr. Buni]

I will miss the Master Ball skin

 

[Scarlet Sky]

Will profile editing be available in the new forum? Either right away or later via an add-on or something? :s I kinda liked that feature.

 

[Enzap]

I have one question: Although the current blogs and social groups are going, will we be able to create new ones after the update?

I believe that is correct since Archaic said they can be recovered in required, but I could be wrong. He might just be referring to the saved data itself rather than the features.