Kangaroo
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Not So EZ, Huh?
Monday, June 06, 2005, 12:56 PM
06/06/2005 - What's the Deal with EZboard?
It is “the largest online community network site on the planet,” according to its home page. If that’s true, much of the planet went dark early on May 30th. And most of the EZboard planet, home to online news and discussion forums for million of users, is still dark.
In a letter from Robert Labatt, CEO of EZBoards, Inc., the company claims the downing of their network—which has resulted in the loss of vast amounts of data—was the work of a “vicious Internet attack.” Believable enough. But Labatt also claims that the mysterious Internet attacker also deleted all the backups the company supposedly keeps of its customers’ data. “…we have back up data from the May 9th incremental back-up (we perform back-ups every day, but the attacker deleted many of them),” Labatt said.
Hold the phone.
Internet hackers are part of daily life in the 21st Century. But should a huge corporation that earns its bread in the data business be so vulnerable to an attack against not only its servers, but its backup data? Techrepublic.com, one of the Internet’s most respected sites among information technology professionals, would be appalled at the notion. “Two-thirds of members who responded to a recent CIO Republic Quick Poll said that they store at least some system backups in an off-site facility—and an overwhelming number of the members who wrote to tell us more about their backup methods said they use tape.”
If the network outage is in fact due to an “Internet attack,” how would the attacker get access to secure tapes or discs? From the EZBoard At a Glance Page: “ezboard's experienced management team are Internet entrepreneurs with deep, successful backgrounds in online consumer services and robust application development.”
Would such an experienced team not have access to the simple, common sense strategies outlined by Techrepublic?
Harold Mack, associate director of computing facilities for Washington University in St. Louis, doesn’t think so. “Using the benefit of hind-sight, the backup strategy was inadequate. Backups are to protect against data loss from all threats: from equipment failures, software failures and natural disasters, to mistakes by employees and malicious attacks. The backup strategy used did not provide such protection.
“I have always found it more useful to ask who could have prevented the data loss rather than asking whose judgment was flawed,” Mack continued. “The data has been lost and EZBoards.com needs to move on. All that remains is to see if their customers will also move on.”
Repeated attempts to obtain commentary from Ezboard management were unsuccessful. After phone and email messages were ignored, BSW.org posted open letters in Ezboards’ own customer support forums. These were deleted by board administrators.(Pope Craig)
Monday, June 06, 2005, 12:56 PM
06/06/2005 - What's the Deal with EZboard?
It is “the largest online community network site on the planet,” according to its home page. If that’s true, much of the planet went dark early on May 30th. And most of the EZboard planet, home to online news and discussion forums for million of users, is still dark.
In a letter from Robert Labatt, CEO of EZBoards, Inc., the company claims the downing of their network—which has resulted in the loss of vast amounts of data—was the work of a “vicious Internet attack.” Believable enough. But Labatt also claims that the mysterious Internet attacker also deleted all the backups the company supposedly keeps of its customers’ data. “…we have back up data from the May 9th incremental back-up (we perform back-ups every day, but the attacker deleted many of them),” Labatt said.
Hold the phone.
Internet hackers are part of daily life in the 21st Century. But should a huge corporation that earns its bread in the data business be so vulnerable to an attack against not only its servers, but its backup data? Techrepublic.com, one of the Internet’s most respected sites among information technology professionals, would be appalled at the notion. “Two-thirds of members who responded to a recent CIO Republic Quick Poll said that they store at least some system backups in an off-site facility—and an overwhelming number of the members who wrote to tell us more about their backup methods said they use tape.”
If the network outage is in fact due to an “Internet attack,” how would the attacker get access to secure tapes or discs? From the EZBoard At a Glance Page: “ezboard's experienced management team are Internet entrepreneurs with deep, successful backgrounds in online consumer services and robust application development.”
Would such an experienced team not have access to the simple, common sense strategies outlined by Techrepublic?
Harold Mack, associate director of computing facilities for Washington University in St. Louis, doesn’t think so. “Using the benefit of hind-sight, the backup strategy was inadequate. Backups are to protect against data loss from all threats: from equipment failures, software failures and natural disasters, to mistakes by employees and malicious attacks. The backup strategy used did not provide such protection.
“I have always found it more useful to ask who could have prevented the data loss rather than asking whose judgment was flawed,” Mack continued. “The data has been lost and EZBoards.com needs to move on. All that remains is to see if their customers will also move on.”
Repeated attempts to obtain commentary from Ezboard management were unsuccessful. After phone and email messages were ignored, BSW.org posted open letters in Ezboards’ own customer support forums. These were deleted by board administrators.(Pope Craig)
Ezboards’ claim that an Internet attacker deleted the backups meant to safeguard millions of users’ data
