Topic: FYI: Security problem for users of Auran forums

[NJAntman]

Gotta read my email more often...

20th January 2005

This email is to let you know that a security breach has occurred on the Auran server that hosts The Trainz, Jet, Bridge IT and MyVirtualHome forums. This breach was discovered a few days ago and the decision was made to bring the server down in order to investigate further.

Our investigation has revealed that your Planet Auran member and/or MyVirtualHome citizen profile may have been compromised. We would like to point out that there exists no evidence that your details have been accessed and in fact the nature of the attack on our servers would seem to indicate that this scenario is indeed unlikely. However, given the aforementioned, it remains a possibility that this may have occurred and our recommendation is that you immediately change your password via the Planet Auran profile or MyVirtualHome Citizen page. If you also use this username/password combination with other internet accounts, such as banking, then you should also change the password on those sites as soon as possible.

Please note that Auran's e-commerce service is not affected by this breach and that there is no problem at all with the security of your financial records. In addition, Auran's e-commerce server does not store your credit card number so that even in the event of a breach there is no information that could be accessed.

Our analysis of this attack has gathered a lot of information from logs present on the server, and we will be providing this information to other sys admins whose servers were used in this attack and also providing the information we have to the Australian Federal Police Internet unit. Finally, the nature of the attack has highlighted the area in which the security of the server was breached and we have made modifications to the server to prevent this type of attack from occurring again.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused and we hope to have the forums up and running again very soon.

Auran
www.auran.com