h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Several folks have noticed that something very odd is happening with Who's Online (this site only). At any moment there may be as many as 4000+ researchers showing as being online. Many of these are known to be abandoned accounts, including DNA (U42) and nighthoover (U183456). Also various italic accounts that are inactive (U3302327 is currently "on"). We've been discussing it here, but just in case this isn't some sort of site testing and instead might be an indication of someone "hacking" the site, I thought I'd mention it here.

Anyway, we're just curious. Of course, this is the weekend so by the time Monday morning rolls around it might have stopped.

BTW by "discussing it here" I meant to add F64235?thread=8075087 .

Hi all. This has been brought to our attention, and we're investigating it. Thanks

Oh... So this wasn't some system test after all.

Very curious.

DNA's logged in again

Spooky.

If this is some sort of hack, say they've cracked security and are trying to get in, all I can see someone getting away with is possibly gathering email addresses and passwords. I'm not concerned with any information I have on here as it's all public and the only other sites that I use this password on are similar (i.e. harmless). I suppose they could be trying to get further into the BBC domain however. I do see several italics "online" that I don't think actually are.

We're being asimulated.

Well, since we haven't heard from the italics for a few days, and the bug/attack/test is still going on, I've decided that once it DOES stop I'll be changing my password.

It need not be an outside attack... Just as likely I recon is someone inside the Beeb, sitting at another desk, on a differnt team to our Italics, and they just forgot* to ell the team who runs this site they were fiddling with things well... its possible surely My money on its nighthoover returning...

I'll still be changing my password.

Same here. My current is too simple anyway, even though the site says it is good.


GT

Mine needs an upgrade anyway too. It's been the same for... (looks at watch)... nearly 12 years.

Things are very odd today.
My conversation list won't update, and/or is showing incorrect information. the list of 20 most recent conversations shows information at odds with the actual state of conversations at least as listed in my conversation list... lettuce have a look what happens when I post this massage.

Yep. This message, that what I just posted here, in this here very thread, appears on the twenty most recently updated conversations but not in my conversation list on my PS as having had a post to it Might be my end though... think I'll whipe cookies and biscuits and small cupcakes on my computer

so heres this
pass it on

it seems we have, probably only temporarily, lost the ability to see new postings on our personal spaces

so here are two links to see latest postings

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/info?cmd=conv will show last 20 conversations

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/info?cmd=conv?show=200 will show last 200 conversations

at least you can see when the REAL last posting was in each thread

oh! and our message center stays current... at least for new messages anyway

Whatever is causing it, it's still going on. I see DNA logged in again this morning.

Well I don't really know much about terribly technical things but as it has been 6 days with no updates yet, I am going to have a guess.

It looks to me as though the program for who is online has been changed. It did used to log who was logged on. As it should.

I think it is now logging researchers whose user page has been loaded by anyone not just themselves.

If only researchers themselves ever loaded their own user pages that would be almost the same as who is online as once logged on we then go to our user spaces.

But here at h2g2 other people load our pages. It is part of life here.

I don't know who is loading all the long departed and non existant researchers though. DNAs own page makes sense as he is linked from the new h2g2.

You may be on to something there. I just did a little test by checking Who's Online, then pulling up someone's space that hasn't been on in awhile and sure enough, it popped up on Who's Online.

I'm trying another now that may be more definitive...

Yep... I think you got it. I pulled up one researcher who hasn't posted in over a year and it showed up. Then I pulled up a researcher who's been banned and that showed up.

I suppose when we see the numbers jump up into the three and four thousands that might be happening when search engine spiders and web caches are spidering our site.