Remembering Kevin...
June 28, 2010
Remembering Kevin Cosby (GetMeOut)
We Miss You Kevin.
Go ahead, spin the wheel
November 15, 2008
...because every single square's a Whammy. Whether it's that chick you're into that tells you to get lost, or that long-lost buddy shows back up after totally ditching you for a new clique, the weird kids you ran with when you thought nobody was looking, that teacher you had that kept sending mixed signals, or that new fella you run into that seems to know more about your past than you're really comfortable with. There's no way to escape it, you've just got to stay on your toes and keep your eyes open.
It's that time of year again...
October 22, 2008
When all good little boys and girls gather together to observe that most sacred of holidays.
It seems like it starts earlier every year...
The More Things Change...
July 09, 2008
...it's been months now since the trail went cold. Months since many of us went our seperate ways, too exhausted or too frustrated to keep searching, hoping, believing. It's not the first time the outpost has sat silent and dark, it's members scattered to the winds, and it might not be the last, who can say?
What is for certain is that there are five of us who don't have the luxury of walking away. They've become, irrevocably, part of the nightmare we've all experienced. Part of the madness.
I can't help but think that while we go about our everyday lives, the outpost crumbles, the prayer wheel turns, and the nightmare continues.
It's time for Providence to come home.
The attack of Lucky5.exe
August 17, 2007
It's been ages! Perhaps a more chatty post will follow, but I want to get this information out there as quickly and as cleanly as possible.
In December, the server that hosts Sentry Outpost was attacked by a virus that we now know to be Lucky5.exe. The attack irreparably damaged all of the files that we had hosted there while leaving directories and files on unused ports.
In mid-April, our forum saw a dramatic increase in registered users who claimed to have discovered the website not because of the network security focus but because a psychic in Florida had sent them a distributed puzzle via snail mail that contained the url to this website. Additionally, the packages that they received pointed them to Craigslist where the psychic appears to post her "dreams." It was through these "dreams" that we discovered the passwords to the directories left by the virus. It is still a matter of debate as to her intent and knowledge regarding the virus and Sentry Outpost.
Until just a few weeks ago, we were still in the dark about what happened to the website and how it was attacked. While searching for the virus that may have been responsible for the attack, the owner of ronomi.comdiscovered the Lucky5.exe malware. The program contains pieces of text that are similar to the text discovered in the hidden directories of our two websites as well as at least one other known infected server.That text seems to be an Arabic prayer to Yog Sothoth. Our research on this malware is still ongoing, but at this time it appears to be quite dangerous despite its extremely low viral potential.
The malware makes repeated attempts to contact various IPs selected through an algorithm that takes pieces from an Arabic prayer to Yog Sothoth. Upon a successful connection, information will be exchanged which will change the algorithm and initiate an attack on a web server similar to what occurred at Sentry Outpost in December. The purpose of this communication is not yet known.
It's notable that this malware is packaged with an installer and it will force you to agree to a rather long, convoluted, and poorly translated EULA. This EULA not only includes text about user responsibility and implications that this program will interact with your computer and the internet, but also health warnings that include symptoms such as headaches, blurred vision, light sensitivity, abnormal changes to moods and behavior, hallucinations, lucid dreaming, anxiety, and an increase in suicidal thoughts.
While the program does not seem to harm your computer, when considering the recent suicide of Kevin Cosby (aka GetMeOut) and institutionalization of Bryce Doher (aka TheMagician) as well as the bizarre dreams of "B.A. St. Feline", it is our recommendation that, if you find Lucky5.exe on your computer, you uninstall it immediately. Please note that while it seems that Lucky5.exe is a Windows malware, the compromised servers that we know of have all been UNIX variants.
If you have any information or would like to become involved in the research, please join us on the forums. We would love to hear from you!
The unluckiest of days
April 13, 2007
Today is, of course, the unluckiest of unlucky days. You'll need to stay inside, away from mirrors and black cats and, by all means, don't walk under any ladders or step on any cracks! The best way to do this, of course, is by getting reacquainted with the Outpost - which suffered a most unlucky corruption just a few months ago. If you haven't checked back in since then, you're really missing out!
A lot of the "boring" administrative stuff is below. Not that getting some forums and a wiki up in running isn't exciting, but how can it compete to getting our Outpost History and Jen's Betting Thread back? And, of course, there's been a bit of discussion, most recently on Pandora's Thumbdrive - an interesting piece of social hacking and play. Ok, so that's what I took from it - the others of course had their own take and we'd love to hear yours!
Even with that excitement, I must admit that it's been pretty quiet round these parts. It's just not the same without all the old posts and, really, without you. We're trying though! Bryce is still working on the server and the handful of us that have returned are dedicated to bringing this place back to its former glory. We can't do it alone. No matter how hard we try, the place just won't be the same until a few more people start helping to fill out the boards and the wiki. So, please, if you're still checking in, take the time to register an account and say hi. We'd love to see you and hear what you've been up to the past few months! And, if you're just finding us for the first time, Welcome! You came at the perfect time! So hop on over to the wiki and learn a bit more about us and the pop on over to the forums and let us know a bit more about you and your interests and of any great news you've heard in the past few weeks. Oh, and don't let Arthur scare you off. He's much more cuddly than he'd like us all to believe!
So, happy Friday the 13th! Let's hope it's your luckiest one yet!
The Outpost Threat Taxonomy
March 04, 2007
Remember that ol' Sentry Outpost Threat Taxonomy thread? Well it's back and it's going to be better than ever!
No, don't get excited. Bryce hasn't recovered it from the ol' server (yet!). But the forum never was a good place for it anyway. It's much more suited for the wiki where we can build on to it and cross reference stuff. A living document of what we do. Imagine the possibilities!
You'll find the Threat Taxonomy on the Outpost Wiki where you are free to add whatever pages you'd like - just try to help keep things organized in the process. Like a lot of things around here, it's pretty empty and needs your help. So, go check it out and edit it to your hearts content.
Each Sentry is Important!
February 02, 2007
I wanted to remind people that the Sentries have always been an informal, volunteer-as-need-be, get it done kind of group. That’s part of what we all have loved about it all of these years. So if you really want to thank people like Bryce and I, “thank you” works just fine. It works a lot better than encouraging guilt in other people for not having the time to volunteer as much.
As you can see from the overwhelming number of us who’ve bothered to return since the crash, we’re in a situation where each Sentry has already proven themselves an important contributor. Maybe we’ll be surprised and another fifty old sentries will show up next just having been too busy in January to re-register. But it’s more likely that we’ll be rebuilding from our smaller core group, where each of us is important.
Update on Server Problems
January 25, 2007
The power of the guilty conscience (or fear of bad PR, hard to say)…the web hosting people have been exceptionally nice these last few days. I wondered why, but now I know… they’re about to throw in the towel and want to us to let them off the hook with a pat on the back and a “there there you poor tired techies you”. According to them the problem seems to be with a hard drive in the shared RAID array. They tried to tell me “and it’s your drive” but I am not buying it. I asked them if they knew what RAID level we were on but it doesn’t matter, this could have been prevented. I am thinking they never set a parity disk so now we are paying for it. They’ve offered to swap us out to another server, but I’m not ready to let this go quite yet…I saw one of my little clean up scripts running in top yesterday, even though that’s a file that wont open. So I have hope that there’s still a light on in there somewhere and I’ll be able to recover something. Heck, it’s better than sudoku in terms of interesting ways to waste your spare time.
History of the Sentries
January 19, 2007
I think we all should give a HUGE round of applause to Bryce for the amount of work he's been doing for us over the past few weeks. Don’t let his effort go to waste!
To kick start the wiki project (really, this is going to be a great project for us this year!), I posted something that I found hiding in the depths of my computer… a draft of the "History of the Sentries." It's a bit out of date because it was written all the way back on October 04 when we were working on the relaunch. I've updated it a bit with a few notes, but could really use your help in expanding it.
I'll be emailing a bunch of you who haven't re-registered yet… the other Sentries could use your help!
Sentry Wiki Launched
January 18, 2007
Ask and it shall appear. Or something like that. I’ve installed a wiki for our use. There didn’t seem to be too many folks already re-registered so I went ahead and created duplicate accounts for the wiki. Even built a patch so that registering in the future is a two-for-one moment…register for the forum and get a wiki account for free! Marie is leading the “fill the wiki” charge while I track down a few lingering problems. Several of you have pointed out that every so often the server goes dumb. My money is on one or more inaccessible files causing a kernel panic so the server reboots. Sleep is for the weak, but I’m hoping this doesn’t take too many late night hours… but then again, the so called “hot shots” at our hosting company haven’t made much headway. Proving once again that if you want something done you’d better be willing to do it yourself.
Any other requests while I’m slaving away?
Rebuilding the Past
January 14, 2007
Looking at the empty forums and thinking of all the lost conversations, I remembered that I used to save interesting notes and conversations to text files. That was ages ago – two, three computers ago, maybe more – but I can't be the only one of us that does such things. Wouldn't it be great if we could all do a search for anything we might have saved so that we can rebuild our past?
Here's the exciting part – I've used this idea to convince Bryce to finally set us up with a wiki! It'll be a great way to organize the research and notes that we all used to complain about being scattered through too many threads. We'll easily be able to create hyperlinked relationships, and just imagine the search capabilities! Oh so much easier. And we don't have to use it purely to archive our past. Our present and future are just as important.
Every little bit helps, so please chip in once the wiki is up and working properly – and, if you have any advice on wiki software, please please please send it along to Bryce. He's going on and on about a custom application and security and that's just crazy talk.
Also, if you haven't re-registered (sadly, this is most of us), what are you waiting for?
A Year to Grow
January 09, 2007
This is really an exciting time for us Sentries. Sure, we lost all of our old messages, but how many of us really visited the archives? The forums are not who we are, but a record of what we've accomplished. There is so much more left for us to do, to discuss, and to bet on. When I log in to the now empty board, I'm not seeing all that is missing but all that is to come.
This is our year to grow and our opportunity to be… more.
To do that, we need everyone to re-register. So, what are you waiting for – head on over to the forum and check out our new digs! And be sure to stop by the “We're Back” thread and give Bryce the thanks he deserves for getting the forums up as quickly as he did with everything else he has going on.
Forums Back Up
Fine! How about I hit Clt-Alt-Del, eh? I’m not thrilled with running the second SQL server so much when we don’t know what happened, but I’ve launched the new forums for the Outpost to save myself the headache induced by countless “please oh please” emails from Marie. So talk/debate/laugh/fight but PLEASE let me know if anything starts going sideways or looks a bit wonky. I’ll bet my morning coffee that there are going to be dozens of things that need fixing before this machine is anything close to stable.
We are the Sentries!
January 05, 2007
Since Bryce seems to be droning on and on about the various technical issues, let me tell you what's really going on: I've spent the better part of the past few weeks upset that we lost all of our history - our Sentry culture. It's gone. Oh no! The tragedy! Every other email I sent to Bryce was along the lines of "But you've just got to fix it! If it's gone, everyone will leave!" As always, he ignored my pleas and, instead, kept ranting about the corruption. Finally it hit me – we are not just entries in a database and we are so much more than a few words on a message board.
We are the Sentries! We talk, we debate, we laugh, we fight. We are a community! A hive! A family!
My revelation inspired loud guffaws from Bryce, but he did agree to stop trying to figure out the fantastical algorithms behind the corruption long enough to get the forum back up and running. That's right! In a matter of days, the Sentry board will be back!
Obviously, it's not going to be the same. For the time being, at least, everything is gone. So, we'll just have to work together to rebuild all that we've lost and celebrate in all that we have. You will also have to re-register, but that's no big deal. We can do that, right? Right?
SentryOutpost.com Back Online
January 02, 2007
Well, it’s back! Sort of. After a few weeks in corrupt data limbo I’ve gotten the Outpost back online. Or at least, the blog.
The folks at the hosting company claim to be on top of this, but…they haven’t solved the problem yet and I don’t know how fast they’re moving. A two week outage is unacceptable but at least I got the ODBC connection to the SQL back to restore the archives. A new board would mean starting from scratch. So, hang in there a while longer. More when there’s more…