RS Fansite Hacking

Posted by Martyj on 10/13/11.

Many of you may already know by know that a lot of RS fanistes are being hacked.

RuneHQ had its forum information taken.

Tip.It was also hacked.

So is GamingHeavens at risk? Of course. Before we get into discussion about this let me explain what happened with the other websites. How this information was stolen from RuneHQ was by a SQL Injection attack to pull extra data from their database. If you would like to know how this can be done you can learn yourself here: http://www.hackthissite.org/playlevel/4/

 

So back to the question at hand. Is GamingHeavens at risk? Yes. Every website is at risk of these attacks. Even the most secure website has vulnerablities. The upside is that GamingHeavens is fairly new codebase. The problem with these large fansites is that they have old code bases in which they don't escape any input from the user before executing a SQL query.

Remember that GamingHeavnes is on its 2nd revision from 2008. We have no old code. Our old code is almost as new as some websites new code. That being said remember that no website is 100% secure.

Here is what you can do to protect yourself.

1. Use long passwords.

2. Make your email accounts secure. If you have a security question make sure it is not easily guessable by someone that knows you. "What is your pet's name" is a bad question. "Where were you born" is also a bad question. If you can make up your own question. OR what you could do is instead of putting a legit answer down you can use this as an opportunity for another password. Your dog's name can now be skl58*slklghs instead of fluffy.

3. Never give out your password to anyone. Not your mother, your brother, your girlfriend, not even to your imaginary friend.

4. Use a uniq password for each website. I know its hard to remember all these passwords but there is software out there for you to remember it.

 

Right now I will go through GH's code just to tripple check its security. The code is not the only thing that will depend on GH's security. You are too. Keep your account secure and GH will be secure. We're all in this together.

If you have any concerns about security please post on this forum topic. We will try to answer them as best as possible.

 

Happy Birthday Gaming Heavens!

Posted by HardK0re on 06/21/11.

A History Lesson
Back in May of 2006, a Runescape fansite called Runegamer was born. The fansite was created by a popular youtube video maker named Maxboison, the aim of the fansite was to grow a community full of people who share the common interest of video making/watching and Runescape. The website had thousands of members and a growing community with a good forum atmosphere and a very popular radio and chat page. To anyone who can remember back in 2006 and long nights of Runegamer radio and Xat chat, I applaud to you. Sometime during 2008, Maxboison and TehNoobShow decided to join forces and create the ultimate Runescape fansite, they joined their own websites of Runegamer and UbNub to create Evil Chicken. Evil chicken looked fantastic, with a fresh new look and a much bigger community. With a very healthy start, things were looking up, but not for long, I won't go into great detail to why the fansite failed, but if you are interested, please click here to read more about it. Evil chicken was closed until further notice during August 2008. Before the complete end of Evil Chicken, MartyJ put his thinking cap on and thought of creating a new fansite but for all gamers, he messaged some people on Evil Chicken and found a trustworthy team to work with: Fantikers and Amber. With their efforts, they created the website you see below. Soon after the creation of Gaming Heavens and the fall of Evil Chicken, a mass Email was sent around to the majority of the users of Evil Chicken and people began to flock to Gaming Heavens.

On June 20th of 2009, the VPS was purchased for Gaming Heavens, the site was created and looked nothing like it does today! (Look below for a screenshot of the original version of Gaming Heavens). On June 24th, the very first Gaming Heavens account was created, MartyJ. Since then we have grew into a great community of gamers and can only keep growing and become greater.

(Click on the image to be taken to a live version of version 1)

The Present Day
We are currently in version 2, which is the grey themed website you see now and version 3 is in development as I type. With version 2 of the website, many new features were included with the launch such as: new design, game guides, radio and chat page, upgraded forum (IP.Board), news slider and poll. Gaming Heavens also launched numerous new game servers such as TF2, Minecraft, and CoD which we continue to enjoy now. A ventrilo server was purchased for valued members to use but was later opened to the public with the new guest accounts. 

 

Looking to the Future
With version 3 in development, we continue to grow as a community and website. We hope to improve on the services we bring you and maintain the quality of our site. With the roll out of version 3 we hope to bring you a variety of new services, for example: an updated design, a new weekly podcast, more regular content and a better content management system.

What does this mean for you?

• Generally, a better experience!
• A much more friendly user interface, which makes it easier to get around the site.
• Much more content will be added more regularly whether this be guides, news or reviews. The latest gaming info will be available right here on gaming heavens.
• A bigger community feeling, more things will be linked and join in together much better.
• More device support.
• More user customizability and options.
• More ways to use gaming heavens!

~Staff

Introducing Our Podcast

Posted by HardK0re on 06/11/11.

Welcome fellow GHers,
We have recently decided to air a regular podcast highlighting gaming news, GH news, game reviews and discussions, and your feedback.

We will record (and hopefully air live) today some time (check here for details). When we do, we will air this live on the radio, recorded mp3 on the site, and post it to youtube.

Want to be a part of the show? Contact us during the show in the in-ventrilo chatroom, post in the future Podcast subforum, or email us a sound-clip on our email support@gamingheavens.com.

Throw us feedback and suggestions so we can continue to make our new content as high quality content.

Thanks,
Matt.

New Ventrilo Server [host]!

Posted by Fantikerz on 04/21/11.

Our last Ventrilo provider was getting pretty dicey, so we decided to pack up and move over to TypeFrag.

What does this mean for me?

• Less downtime (our previous host was kicking us off every 10 minutes at one point)!
• [Maybe] less lag (we're still in Dallas, but a different datacenter - so who knows)!
• Our server now has fewer slots (35 now because we really didn't fill up the server to 50 more than once)!
• You won't have to change your connection info (this one deserves sub-points)!
  • I've arranged for our user, motd, channels, properties, and ranks to be transferred over, and not need to be entered manually!
  • Our hostname isn't static, and uses an A Record, so all you need to do is wait for vent.gamingheavens.com to point to the new server!
  • I've asked TypeFrag to make our port 4880, as it was on the last host!

All we need to do is wait, and you'll soon be able to connect to the new TypeFrag server without changing any of your info. You'll know when you're on the new server when you see something like "OMG NEW SERVER!" in the server comment area.