Gamedev.net is still down?!?

I sometimes go to GameDev.net for the Unix, “alternative library” (whatever that means), and beginner discussion forums. At the very least, it is a good source of technical knowledge, and I love perusing the archive of articles.

But for the past week, the site has been down. If you go to the website, you will be greeted by some ravenous humans getting ready to devour a subdued and near-sighted rhinocerous, and the following note:

We detected an attempted malicious attack on the site and have decided to take the site offline to assess any impact. GameDev.net will be back online as soon as possible.

How rough an attack could it have been? I know that they use Windows-based servers and ASP-based scripting, but I would think at the most a day or two of downtime would have been enough to fix whatever issues they are encountering. Clearly something more nefarious is going on…

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Posted by GBGames on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 3:49 pm.

11 Responses to “Gamedev.net is still down?!?”

It likely wouldn’t take long to bring the site back up, but itmay be that they haven’t found or solved the initial problem. There’s not much point bringing the site back up if the issue hasn’t been fixed. (This is pure speculation on my part though)

BTW, your site keeps rejecting my posts. How tight is your validation?

Left by Ken on February 6th, 2007

I’m not sure why it would reject the posts. I don’t have a blacklist of forbidden words that automatically delete posts or anything.

Left by GBGames on February 6th, 2007

It is a bit concerning they have been down for so long. This is the first post I have seen even mentioning the site’s problems. I would assume it has to do with the asp -> db interaction. My personal pages are still up, and all of the sub sites like nehe.gamedev.net are still running. Just anything that accesses a db is down. Maybe a nasty xss hole… yaa im logged in as staff, now lets see what I can do.

Left by smc on February 8th, 2007

I am also concerned with that now. It was down for so long. I hope it will be back soon cause I think I can’t live without it anymore

Left by DMINATOR on February 9th, 2007

In any way, the downtime is getting very very long. The fact that they were aware of the problem and its still taking them so long to fix suggests that they are probably waiting for a fixing patch from a third party.

But even they should bring the site up but with restrictions. Read only for example…

Left by Harry Kalogirou on February 9th, 2007

I found this at the Great Games Experiment: http://shilbert.com/gdnet/down.html

Left by GBGames on February 9th, 2007

Yes,

I’m pretty concerned too. Although I do not visit GD.Net to often GD.Net is one of the more important gaming forums. A lot of knowledge is there to be found. I’d assume the site woudl be back in a few days, but if it takes this long I’m really worried about what kind of backup scheme they have. Since you guys above said it was DB related, it might as well have been some SQL injection including a DROP TABLE statement? Scary thought! Especially since DB’s are often forgotten in the backup scheme…

(Then again, I always think that major game dev sites could atleast get a tiny bit of sponsering from big game development companies who are so eager on new, young, out of the box thinking employees. A tiny bit of sponsering could give some sites way more potential!)

Left by Concerned programmer on February 9th, 2007

Dave Astle responded to an e-mail I sent. Hopefully he will not mind me posting this here…

Quote: Dave Astle
We actually need to post an update to the site so there are no misconceptions. The hack was taken care of fairly easily, but as a precaution, we decided to wipe and restore our servers, and in the process ran into some unrelated hardware issues that we’re still working on.

Left by smc on February 9th, 2007

Thanks for the update, smc!

Left by GBGames on February 9th, 2007

[…] Quoting SMC quoting Dave Astle (hope that’s cool) We actually need to post an update to the site so there are no misconceptions. The hack was taken care of fairly easily, but as a precaution, we decided to wipe and restore our servers, and in the process ran into some unrelated hardware issues that weâ€™re still working on. […]

Left by Gamedev.net is down at VoodooLabs on February 9th, 2007

Yea, i was looking for a thread about euler angles and then the site drop down. Well i hope they could brign it up soon.

Left by Camilo on February 10th, 2007

Something to say?