Events You May Want to Know About

[Tbone]

Most of you may have noticed that I have not been as active on these forums recently. A large part of that is due to internet problems I've been having, but I have also been busy taking care of the faction. I feel that things are under control enough now for me to enlighten you to a few things that have been going on. Myself and this faction as a whole has been attacked on two fronts for the past few days.

The first incident occurred when I received an IM from a Digital123456789. He told me that he had a message for me from "The Syndicate". He then sent me an email containing an audio file that threatened to get me banned from MxO altogether. Due to privacy issues, the audio file has been edited for you to listen to. You can listen to the audio file at http://www.followtheangel.org/tbone/threat.wav.

"Digital" explained to me that they would reveal information that would get me banned if I didn't "disappear". This, of course, was an empty threat, and I couldn't help but laugh at the audio. There was no way these guys could get me banned, but, due to the nature of the information, I felt it necessary to contact the MxO staff. We'll get back to this story in a second...

Later that night (actually early the next morning), several members of our faction received a message from "FAnoname" on AIM. The message contained a link: http://www.chasetheangel.tk. The culprit logged off before we could do an IP trace.

I went to the site to discover a mock up of our site. We were refered to as "The Flaming Angels". Clicking the edited pic on the main page led to a page making fun of myself, Seven, and likwidtek. A few minutes later hidden text was placed on the page - "spy.htm".

When I went to spy.htm, I discovered our ship roster pasted on the page. Not only was it our ship roster, but it was from the Staff/Captains Forum that most of you don't even know about. It contains tidbits of info on you such as if you are interested in being a captain. Also, I had updated the roster earlier that day, and it was the updated version. The page claimed that we had a spy in our ranks and that there was nothing we could do about it.

You can imagine at this point I became concerned. Our forums are protected via php permissions. These people had either hacked our whole site, hacked a leader's account, or was a leader who had turned coat on us. This would be enough to raise a good bit of alarm, but that wasn't the end. The last sentence was "A spy 'lurks'...". There were quotation marks around "lurks", which led us to lurks.htm.

Lurks.htm claimed that our site would be shut down in 4 days. We basically had 96 hours to back up our files before our site would no longer exist. The page was quickly updated again, however, this time stating we "may" want to back up our files. The 4 days threat was gone, and instead was a disclaimer that we "could not press charges" because it was just a "suggestion" now, and not a threat.

By this point I had a lot of unanswered questions, and thus began our toil to sort things out.

I updated the MxO staff on my status, including the recent events to my previously reported incident, suggesting that perhaps the two were related. I also contacted freewebs.com, the host that the mock page was located on. Freewebs.com took down the site the next day, claiming that it broke a certain code in Federal Law and was under investigation. We also contacted Vizaweb (our own webhost) in hopes of retaining a log of the IPs that accessed that particular ship roster thread. We could only get the log to midnight. Myself and Crimson were the only ones who had accessed the thread. You may say "Aha! Crimson is the culprit!", but both of our IPs accessed it at the same time. We were both in Teamspeak when we discovered everything. Unfortunately, the culprit accessed the thread before midnight (meaning the previous day), and the log was wiped.

Meanwhile, I received word from Thoth that MxO was investigating the matter. With that knowledge, I decided to do some investigating of my own. There were the obvious suspects - those who might have a grudge against myself and FA. Three people in particular came to mind: DoubleOhZero, Kaelmobius, and Solus. All three seemed a little bitter when they left FA.

I contacted DoubleOh first. He claimed and still does claim ignorance to the whole event. To further help clear his name, he offered his help in any way to assist in determining the culprits. I even think it was his idea to contact Freewebs on the matter. He didn't bat an eye when the site was shut down and put under an investigation, so for now he seems to be in the clear.

The other two suspects, Kael and Solus,  I already knew had formed their own clan with ex-members Pyre and Darigaaz. Instead of contacting the two suspects directly, I talked to Darigaaz and Pyre. Darigaaz seemed completely innocent to the events that had occurred. He said he hadn't heard anything about it and even double-checked with his friends to see if they had heard anything about it. If Kael and Solus were involved, they hadn't told him. I took a slightly different approach with Pyre. Knowing the nature of Pyre's spirit, I began feeding him bait to lure out Kael and Solus if they were involved. I talked about how MxO had started an investigation and about how Freewebs had started one as well. I made sure to point out how the website was facing legal matters, and that we believed the same people who sent the audio also created the website. That was all it took.

Kaelmobius messaged me a few moments later confessing to the threatening audio. He swore up and down that he and Solus had no involvement in the website. He explained about how they got bored one night and created the audio file. They had no intention of ever sending it to anyone, but I guess curiousity got the better of them and they had to play the trick on me. They feared getting in serious trouble, though, so they came clear about it. I was appreciative of their honesty and updated the MxO team with my info. A message had already been sent to the AOL address that had sent me the file warning them that they had taken things too far. Problem number one had been resolved.

What was left and what still is left is the more serious threat - the website "hackers". The evidence I have gathered seems to lean towards a leader's account being hacked. I contacted every Captain and staff member and had them change their password. In the meantime, MxO contacted me once again. It seems they are willing to help with this problem as well, despite me learning that it isn't connected with my initial complaint. Warner Brothers is a part of AOL, and FAnoname is an AIM account. They are currently in the process of getting all the information needed to pin down this FAnoname (whoever this is should have really thought this out better...lol). In the meantime, however, it is still very possible that this person has access to our forum and perhaps the entire site.

If you observe any strange behavior, please report it to me immediately. It shouldn't be long before we discover the identity of the culprits, but in case my contacts do fall through, your help would be greatly appreciated. If, by a small chance, our site is deleted, we will still persevere. Just look for details on the main MxO forum or contact me. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me!

[Anonymous]

DISABLED BY FEDERAL LAW AND UNDER INVESTIGATION! w00t!!!!!!

www.freewebs.com/fasux     <was the address that chasetheangel.tk redirected to.

may no longer be up... due to our federal friends

[Anonymous]

Umm....wow?  Some people seem to be taking a simple video game waaaaaaay too far.

These children have already made enough mistakes, and I can't wait till something serious happens to them.  People should know better, bumps in the road like these do nothing to stop the path of the Angels, it will only enrage us, and drive us to press on, and dispatch all our enemies with extreme prejudice.

I hope you get some good news from the MxO staff, Tbone.

[Ketamininja]

lol, ahhh the publicity!
They changed the "threat" to a suggestion.
The suggestion of a threat is still illegal, but it does depend on where you are in the world!

-"Hey, we MAY kill you brutally"
-"oh, cool, I wont take that seriously then" .... I don't think so.

Meh, spys are always an issue, especially when the game is not even out yet.
Once the game is out, we shall see who is loyal to FA from their gameplay.

All I can say is either (a) someone has WAYYY to much time on their hands, or (b) someone is really pissed of with the Angels, which is silly since its all about RP.
Maybe the threat was all just RP

Anyway, as long as you know the sitekey is safe, I'm happy.... ish.

[Anonymous]

Well Tbone, if you haven't already perhaps backing up the site would be a good idea, just to be on the safe side, especially if there is a chance it could be deleted.

[Ketamininja]

well, if it does get deleted, that'll give us an ip to work from...

[Anonymous]

Yea but I'd rather that didn't happen though.

[Anonymous]

Lol..silly .wav...

"I know where you live - or perhaps not..but we are going to find out where you live -- maybe not, I don't feel like spending my time on that.."

That's just funny...like the thumbmovies.


The wav was a prank..but if someone has access to our site, or if a captain has turned against us, it's serious. I hope they can figure this out as soon as possible..

[Anonymous]

Wooooaah.  That's a shocker !

I've been chatting with Pyre AND Kael on and off in the past two weeks.  I don't really know them that much.  When I joined the FAs, Pyre was still in.  He was very helpful and nice with the new recruit I was.

When I asked for help to get a sig, he told me that his friend Kaelmobius would gladly make one for me.  His sig looks good so I was pretty happy about that.

After talking with these two guys for a while they told me Kael was kicked because of the TeamSpeak "incident".  Pyre left the FAs to follow Kael.  They just formed their own clan.

I spent some time talking with Kael, mostly about my sig and after a while I realized he was really pissed off with the FAs and especially with Tbone.  I guess it's because he was kicked.

While we were talking, he started telling me all kinds of bad stuff about Tbone.  Since most of it didn't make much sense and that Kael is only 15, I didn't give that crap much value.

Last time I spoke to him, he told me that everything had been fixed with the FAs and everything was fine now.  At that point, I had no idea what he was talking about.

It all makes sense now.

Anyways, I don't know if Kael and Pyre are the guys that hacked the site but I know they are really close friends and that they seem to have the skills to do it.

I don't really know much else.

Kael seems like an intelligent young guy with issues...

Anyways, he is still working on my sig so next time I talk to him I'll try to learn more.

[Anonymous]

That's pretty crazy, unfortunately I can't get that wav to play so I can't partake in the humor of the threat, but oh well.  At least part of this thing is resolved, hopefully the deletion threats won't follow through.

[Anonymous]

The link just has a "." in it not needed.


Remove the "." at the very end and you should be cool.

[Anonymous]

Heheh.....that really does sound like me.....

And I wont say the names, but they were pretty funny Tbone and Seven...excpet for likwids. That has been circulating around TS for a while now....

[Anonymous]

I just listened to the "threat" audio file.

What a bunch of morons.

[Anonymous]

i dont understand why kael would be upset with tbone about being kicked out. he was the immature child that got himself kicked out, if hes mad at anyone, it should be himself.  I bet tbone wouldn't have minded too much if he had done it while we were on our own ts server with no admins or anything, but the second we scared eris away, tbone was steamed

[Anonymous]

Since I'm not on my computer, I can't listen to the wav file. But I had heard of this threat some time before. I agree with Syntax - these people seem to be taking this game way way waaay to far. Of course it could be argued that we're taking it not far enough, but when it comes to the point of legal obstuction, then that is way to far.

I do not know Kael, Pyre, Dari, or Solus...unforunately. But still forunately the creators of the wav file have been discovered so as not to cause added fear, and thinking someone is even more of a lurking enemy then they really are. However, if a captain's account was hacked, or no hacked, I'm not sure.

I'm really not sure which is better, a captain being a turncoat - or a hacker viewing our files. But I guess I'd have to go with the captain being a turncoat so that s/he could be discovered and then the access to the restricted files would be rightfully restored. But if it's a hacker that can get inside and view the files, there is actually nothing that's stopping him from doing it again.

There is an old saying "Be wise as a serpent, and harmless as a dove." I think we should try to put that to use in this situation.