The runehq board has been offline because of a “hi-jack”/sabotaged incident.

rhq hacked
This is what I have got and gathered from various sources,
they maybe true or partially true and unconfirmed, I am just reporting this event

This started yesterday, when a user on Rhqclan has been demodded from rhqclan because he uploaded a php file, from my sources it was claimed that the file was used to redirect to his/her site and was mostly used on the irc to bypass RHQ rules.
Now that the user who has uploaded that php file got banned, there has been some discussion on the board about it. From a source of mine(unconfirmed) users have been banned for replying to those threads(topics) about it. Those banned users revolted and formed a new clan http://rsrepublic.runedude.net/ . EDIT: As he was banned from both rhq and rhqclan, he told TORC Staff about this, when he was not suppose to and the TORC staff (without second opinion) argued with Lisa (Weezy). Due to some rules or fundamentals of how Rhq works, Lisa de-moded the staff so that they does not pose any security breach to their boards. She then read the chatlogs on #rhqclan on one of the irc servers. She then found out that the users were mocking the admins on the board, so she banned those users on the board leaving the banned users to creating RSR.

How this argument happened and how it lead to the board being trashed:

As the user who uploaded the files was demodded, not banned at first, he decided to tell other staff about it, which lead into a massive argument. The other council/staff tried to put him back on, and both the staff and the user who uploaded the files were banned. Before the ban the admins tried to contact them but they were banned from the irc meaning they couldn’t tell their side of the story. NEW:The council of RSR tried to contact them but the rhq admin didn’t want to listen at first. RSR tried to contact them through Im4ersmart but the rhq admin didn’t want to hear them out.(Please read for more information: new_rsr_irclog1.html) After the RHQ owners have read the chatlogs, they also banned a bunch of users complaining about this(which contributed on the reasons to ban that user). The admins then banned all the users who registered on RSR forum because the admins didn’t want them to trash the TORC forums with flames. Now all the banned users gathered up and formed a new clan RSR. But there were still a few people on the board who still had mod powers had access to the admincp. One of them decided to trash the forum, thus leading runehq to take actions on him. The boards were offline. Gene (Mrstormy) earlier today(the day of the incident) phoned the police to get them investigate this “hack”, more like a “hi-jack n trash”.(which he dropped after talking to the “hacker”)
Some resources

On their site there is a link to the discussion that the runehq owners had with that user and users on rhqclan. Read more

One of the replies on that thread was from mrstormy clarifying the incident that just happened. read more

Here are some chat logs that i downloaded and hosting
Please remember this is for reference only

and here is the full article on RSC Torc_Has_Fal.html
Here is a convo that i obtained from a source of mine which came from RSR: RSR convo
It looks like the lawsuit may have been dropped, but it was quite unclear. Just read it for yourself.
Here are some more chat logs provided from this:stormy’s post

Here is some more resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_misuse_act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act

Here is a post on RSR.htm (sorry no images on the .html)
Here is the chat log after the incident: chatlogs_afterincident.html
Here is a last chat log about this: mrstormy-c(1).txt
Apology from RSR(SE) to torc: A_Personal_A.html
Below are some banners that were used:

RSR_UB_1.gifRSR_UB_2.gif
How the rhqclan got hacked

Well from vague information I was able to get out that a user, was able to access the board to mess the board up, thus getting the police after him. From what i know about IPB, is that it is very hard to hack without an alien script being runned within the site to get access. SQL injection is impossible on the standard install,(from what i know of) unless there has been modification that were added to the board, which has been the case to RHQclan. Poor coding will result into poor security, if you are an ipb customer please refer to bfarber’s guide to $ipsclass.(sorry for going off-topic :P ) EDIT: the person who trashed the forum had already access to the forum mod powers admincp and did not really hack the forum but sabotaged it.

What happened to the hacker?

Like it has been said on the board, the hacker is being delt with the police. From my sources, the hacker was a kid and is going to be prosecuted by Runehq, thus to discourage all further hacker wannabe.EDIT: It looks like mrstormy droped charges to the so called “hacker” and RSR

A statement from the so called “hacker”
As you may now have known from the logs and evidence the so called hacker was just a kid who’s runescape name is “DTC”, he wanted to clear up some things up for us. I am going to rephrase what happened:

DTC was going to leave TORC because of the way the clan was running, but then he saw all his friends getting ban, he got really pissed off by that. So he asked a friend of his if she wanted any guides she wrote, to be returned back to her, as she couldn’t access them as she was banned. Knowing that runehq had a backup of the boards from a discussion with his friends, he decided to go trash the forum. Reasons being that TORC was stressful for him, the rules they had were making a happy volunteer worker into a mad and stressed out volunteer and to top that rhq admins banned his friends which made him really mad. He got 100’s of posts merged together and deleted only the guides that one of his friend asked to. He said he did as a joke “a big exit bang” as he knew Rhq could recover from that as they had a backup. Mrstormy and a few other admins were online when he did it. The next thing, was that he was accused of “criminal charges”. He was scared and couldn’t sleep over the night because of the guilt. He then searched for legal advise, and then went to apologise to Mrstormy, he was crying while he was in the convo. He was totally shocked when he was accused, he even thought he was going to cour until he was told that mrstormy dropped the charges. He never knew the consequences, he thought he could have walked away with it as rhq had a backup.

Now that you have the side of his story most things should be clear now. He reacted without thinking and looking at both side of the story.
Can they be sued in the first place?

The hacker commited sabotage can be prosecuted and the users who commited liable slander can be sued.(That is explained in more details below by someone with experience in LAW)
Below are information from someone who has experience in law and a fair knowledge in the laws that concerns this particular case
If you want to know more about it and felt that you could have been liable to being sued read these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slander_and_libel More specifically this
The point being that it’s spelled “libel” and that they cannot be charged for it. And also the “hacker” isn’t a hacker as he simply used his given mod rights to delete the posts. Another thing RHQ might have need to pay where upon the emotional damages rendered to the minors involved would require payment to the families.

Below is a quote from the user who sent me the information:

Here’s the Computer Crime Act, this is what you want to read concerning the actions of dothecook_cr: This act make it illegal for anyone who does not have the proper authorization to attempt or achieve access to communications and computer networks; to destroy data, programs or computer networks; or, to use, disclose or take data, computer programs, or supporting documentation. An offense against this intellectual property is classified as a Class A misdemeanor punishable by not more than one year in the county jail. If the offense is committed to defraud or to obtain property illegally, then the offender is guilty of a Class C felony which is punishable by not more than ten (10) years or less than one (1) year and one (1) day in prison. If damage to intellectual property is $2500.00 or greater or if there is an impairment of government operation or public communication, transportation, or utility service then the offender is guilty of a Class B felony punishable by not more than twenty (20) years or less than two (2) years in prison. If anyone willfully, knowingly, and without authorization alters of removes data causing physical injury to any person who is not involved in this offense is guilty of a Class A felony which is punishable by life in prison, or not more than 99 years or less than ten (10) years in prison.

The “hacker” could possibly fall under having destroyed data, wich is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by not more than one year in county jail. Howerver this could only go to court if the judge felt that the data destroyed caused a financial loss of greater than $500 and the data lost needs to belong to the person claiming the loss.(According to copyright laws for public forums, all data belongs to the author of the post, so the only people who could press charges according to this incident would have been the authors and even then they would need to have faced a financial lost of at least $500 due to deletion of data in order for a judge to rule the case as valuable enough to enter the court of law. Thus this means if there is no money involved then there is no case, so they can press charges that can go nowhere as the constitution is going to stick with the bill of rights, thus freedom of speech, which allows pointless mudslinging on the internet without punishment by law.

Here is another extract of the conversation:

In reference to both slander and libel, not all defammatory communication falls under one of those headings. If the statement is voiced as opinion and not purpoted to be fact, or the person stateing them does not show wreckless abandon for what is truth, then the statement is protected under Free Speech. We live in a country that allows opinions

You’re completely safe as long as it’s either opinion or true. Your biggest defense is truth, really. That has won the most slander and libel cases.

So I hope this helps you if you still fear lawsuits from runehq and hopes it clears things up.


From what I understand from some sources, that most of the accusation are vague and maybe unable to be used in court. First the accusation of hacking: as from various sources the “hacker” who trashed already had access to the board and had permission to use those features. Thus meaning that he was allowed to use the features, he could just be blamed for immaturity. (side note: I remember when rhq was going to close and most moderators and users were on the chat, they kicked most users for joke, and yet they did not get sued and rhq is still online) And the person to blame of hacking should be maymles as he uploaded a thirdparty entity without permission from the owner. The other acussation is Slandering: well from the chatlogs there maybe some vulgar name calling, but I don’t think it can be held well in court.
What happened to TORC?

The official runehq clan has not fallen but is still well alive, it is just that the users are not on TORC anymore. It was a mass kick of rude users on TORC.

What happened to RHQ?

Runehq is still the same, but there are a few more users who hate runehq. As we all know that most users who have been on runehq and have been mistreated or unfairly judged goes to reside at RSC, tip.it, RV, RSBANDB. This incident may have affected RHQ a little bit.

How the staff were chosen to moderate the clan

Mrstormy let TORC to choose the staff on their own.

What now?

Like it was stated mrstormy didn’t file a lawsuit as RSR takes responsibility and apologizes to torc and rhq. From what I have read Mrstormy has created an account on RSR, and he has posted a post to allow users who were banned to get unbanned. Here is the link to the post “If you would like to be unbanned from RuneHQ read this ” and here is a copy of the post stormy’s post to get unbanned. Everything has been sorted now.
Who got banned?

Most users who were not on the RHQ staff were banned from TORC forums.
Conclusion

From what I understand runehq just did what anyone would do. If this happened on icefuzion you would see a couple of users banned from IceFuzion for acting like that, but I choose my staff well, with the help of johnny, but there are still flaws in these. I say that the way users reacted to this is just idiotic, the user who uploaded the file took it well from what I read from that convo with Weezy, but the staffs who found out about it should at least understand what happened before acting. Think about it, if someone uploaded something to your site without consent, what would you do? The banned and NEW:rhq staffs users acted immaturely but that was because of the users didn’t give any chance to the admins to explain, the admins were banned from the irc before they could explain. Some banned users have already forgotten what happened in the first place, it wasn’t the banned users fault but the person who uploaded that file, why did the users jump right into conclusion from the opinion of one person. I think this event happened to quick and was judged to quick by both the admins and the banned users mostly by the users that went commando and didn’t want to hear from the admins. that none of them were able to explain their side of the story when the event happened and that is why both side doesn’t want to hear their side of the story.

Even though I hate RHQ’s rule and the way they work, it was quite lame acting immaturely.
Just read all the facts that i gathered from both sides.

Things that I need more information about:

  • How exactly did the staff know about the demod of maymles?
  • What other things did maymles do before that
  • Online laws and regulation
  • some more information on the banned users side

Sources are from RSR website, chatlogs, users, TORC site