Who hacks web sites and to what end? This has always been a nagging question. I’ve been nervous for the past 6 months. And you may ask why? Every time there is pollical blow back between the nations, US web sites seem to take a beating. I really try to stay ahead of the security at CSINext, but it is a non-stop effort. CSINext has had about a dozen hacks, 3 of them over the past 10 years, have been data corrupting.

Most hacks at CSINext have been SPAMbot injections. When the site changed it security protocols. The SPAMbot hacks have come to a stop.

I started the latest security patch 2 weeks ago and it created a cascade effect on the stability of the site. Spending a couple of days trying to bring it back from archives & backups, it just wasn’t working. So, I have spent the past 2 weeks rebuilding the site from a data dump. Behind the scenes, CSINext has over 14,000 files and a database that is 250MB with thousands of entries.

Every time I retrieve a piece of CSINext and restore it, I create 2 new problems. With the complexity of the site and dependency on the database, I’m not real surprised. The site is 90% there and most content has been restored.

The good news is the key pieces are back. The logins work, and the repopulation is working. The streams are currently lost, but that was a minor piece of the puzzle.