Slashdot Mirror


Hacker May Be Exposing eBay Back Door

pacopico writes "A hacker specializing in eBay cracks has once again managed to masquerade as a company official on the site's message boards, according to The Register. A company spokesman denies that 'Vladuz's' repeated assaults on eBay point to a larger problem with the site's security. Of course, eBay two days ago claimed to have found a way to block Vladuz altogether, only to see him pop up again. The hacker himself made comments indicating that the company's email servers are connected somehow to the financial information eBay hosts."

73 comments

  1. FUD by User+956 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The hacker himself made comments indicating that the company's email servers are connected somehow to the financial information eBay hosts.

    $100 says this guy has a huge short on ebay stock.

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:FUD by Jonny+Ringo · · Score: 1

      Soon ebay will find his ip, and ebay will send their own corporate police to his house. Once the ebay hit squad arrives and breaks down the door all that is left is a note. The note reads, "by the time you have read this I will have escaped with my millions to an island in the Caribbean. You will not find me as I have had extensive plastic surgery, a voice modulation box, new eyes implanted, and imprinted new finger prints over my old ones. I am also using hair dye # 2... or is it 3? HAHAHAHA! Enjoy your next share holders meeting SUCKERS!"

      ps. Ken Lay says hi.

    2. Re:FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You betting against him? He has crawled in the network, have you? Personally, I am not betting against him.

    3. Re:FUD by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Funny

      I think you forgot, "This message (and house) will self-destruct in 10 seconds. 9... 8..."

    4. Re:FUD by User+956 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You betting against him? He has crawled in the network, have you? Personally, I am not betting against him.

      Has he? How do you know he's not a disgruntled ex-employee, who would have knowledge of their network legitimately? How do you know he's not in cahoots with an ex-employee? Why make persistent efforts to expose this unproven "flaw" in a public manner unless the intention were to harm eBay's image and/or their stock position?

      This sort of information would be worth a lot of money on the black market, if it were true. Why doesn't he sell it?

      If his goal is to protect ebay users, why doesn't he work with ebay security, privately?

      I don't understand why people insist on believing this kind of stuff right out of the gate without any critical thinking.

      --
      The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    5. Re:FUD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You betting against him? He has crawled in the network, have you?

      Masquerading as an admin on a forum does not equate to crawling in their network. Clearly he's an annoyance, but he doesn't need super skills to be an annoyance, and considering how dumb it would be to connect an email server to financial systems, he's claims seem a bit out there too.

    6. Re:FUD by veganboyjosh · · Score: 1

      How do you know he's not in cahoots with an ex-employee?

      hell, if he's in cahoots with someone, would it have to be an ex-employee?

    7. Re:FUD by kd5ujz · · Score: 1

      The email servers must be linked to the transaction servers SOMEHOW, or else you would not recieve all the cute emails when someone outbids you, you win, or someone "buys it now".

      --
      -William
      God is everything science has yet to explain.
    8. Re:FUD by alexjohnc3 · · Score: 1

      I don't understand why people insist on believing this kind of stuff right out of the gate without any critical thinking.

      It's pretty simple actually. I'll give you a hint: The key word is "people".

    9. Re:FUD by AoT · · Score: 1

      Why make persistent efforts to expose this unproven "flaw" in a public manner unless the intention were to harm eBay's image and/or their stock position?

      Well, cause it's funny.

      Or so his name gets in the news.

      mainly the latter.

    10. Re:FUD by the_womble · · Score: 1

      If his goal is to protect ebay users, why doesn't he work with ebay security, privately?

      Given what has happened to other people who have found or disclosed vulnerabilities, that is probably more of a risk than attacking the site.

      This has been discussed on Slashdot before.

    11. Re:FUD by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Publishing this sort of thing privately often doesn't work. I've had numerous security vulnerabilities ignored for years: the use of public FTP sites with user's private passwords is one of the most common. Publicly write-able home directories used by both bosses and their secretaries is another: so are password free SSH keys and software that stores passwords locally in clear text, then NFS export those directories.

      In practice, nothing forces a change faster than an obvious break-in that discomfits the boss's secretary: the second fastest is something that affects the stock price. Even something that is being actively used for break-ins is often ignored due to recalcitrant developers and users who cannot be troubled to use secure practices, or to invest in keeping their software upgraded. The worst of them are those who think "we're inside a firewall, we trust the people we work with!". Then they sneak in a laptop from home and expect it to just work.

    12. Re:FUD by jorgevillalobos · · Score: 1

      I think what really matters here is whether there's a two way communication or one way communication. I would assume that ebay would follow proper design and security patterns, and just allow for the transaction servers to notify the email servers about state changes, so that they can send the appropriate message. The question is whether you can access more than just email if you break into the email servers, which would imply that there is some kind of access from the email servers to the transaction servers, a HUGE security oversight.

      If you have full access to the mail servers you could access state changes for most transactions and most users, but this shouldn't be enough to obtain their financial or even personal information. A proper security scheme would prevent this.

    13. Re:FUD by tinkertim · · Score: 1

      If his goal is to protect ebay users, why doesn't he work with ebay security, privately?


      More critical thinking suggests he has already plundered the information, did so long ago and has been refreshing his copy frequently, finally made enough on the black market selling it in small chunks rather than risk letting someone know what he had and get ratted for bounty or someone else trying to buy their way out of being prosecuted for something else and perhaps is already enjoying life in abu dabi?

      H
  2. Time for a new plan.... by CasperIV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe ebay should just pay the guy to tell them how to fix their system and be done with it. You know that this will all end with an exploit for ebay being discovered and someone getting sued.

    1. Re:Time for a new plan.... by needacoolnickname · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Isn't that frowned upon?

      Breaking in. Taunting someone and then getting paid to fix things? Bad precendece I would think.

  3. ridiculous by ILuvRamen · · Score: 1, Interesting

    wow, that's quite an interested technical statement to say they found a way to block ANYONE forever. Anyone can sit down at any computer and you can't tell the difference. The only way would be if he's in jail and apparently he's not so I wonder but genius at eBay wrote up that statement. Btw in case you didn't know, eBay owns Paypal so obviously their general IT and technical designing isn't so great already.

    --
    Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
    1. Re:ridiculous by Pojut · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      ::shrug:: I know people complain about it all the time, but i've never once had a technical issue with either Ebay or PayPal, and I use both of them regularly (i.e. I buy at least 2-3 things off Ebay a week)

      Perhaps it's because I only buy and don't sell?

    2. Re:ridiculous by fmobus · · Score: 1

      maybe he meant they found the security hole that allowed him to post whatever he was posting and fixed. This is perfectly possible, albeit unlikely given eBay's complexity and possibly WTF-ish codebase.

    3. Re:ridiculous by AKAImBatman · · Score: 1

      wow, that's quite an interested technical statement to say they found a way to block ANYONE forever.

      Block him from gaining Customer Service (a.k.a. "admin") rights to the system, not block him from being a customer. RTFA.
    4. Re:ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      # conf t
      # ip route hacker.com 255.255.255.255 Null0
      # end

      Disaster averted! We have reports the attacker is weeping as he attempts to bypass our block!

    5. Re:ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's your ebay username?

    6. Re:ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      possibly WTF-ish codebase.

      God, more slashdot/tdwtf crossover. Great. (Can't say I didn't see it coming)

    7. Re:ridiculous by el+americano · · Score: 1

      You've been watching "Firewall" again?

      Jack: Hey, Ravi. What have we got?

      Ravi: Brute-force login.
      The interesting thing is he's coming in through Hong Kong,
      Korea and Malaysia, but he's trying sequential account
      numbers. He's hacking all over!

      Jack: Move over for me.
      Let's try a rule change on him,
      see what he does. Put in an IPS signature
      that black-holes the pattern. See if that slows him down.

      Ravi: That'd slow me down!

      --
      Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
  4. Not an auction site... by Radon360 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...eBay is just a venue for people to exchange items, such as malicious code into an unexpecting user's browser.

    When will they learn to do something simple like disallow META tags in item descriptions to stop redirects to sites with malicious code, rather than to hide such things and disavow any responsibility.

    1. Re:Not an auction site... by nexuspal · · Score: 1

      Second this, My browser got hijacked. What they do is post a legitiment auction, then, after it has been approved, they change the images to pornagraphic ones to entice clicks. Once they get a click, the Meta tag redirects and injects exploit.

      And you ask me why I clicked? I wanted to see what the hell they had to sell!

      --
      I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure :-P
    2. Re:Not an auction site... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Christ, I'd be happy if they disallowed font tags.

      <FONT COLOR=REDHOT SIzE=+4>My screen is not big e-nuff to read ur shipping terms!!!!!! plz reply....</FOTN>

    3. Re:Not an auction site... by guruevi · · Score: 1
      When will they stop allowing any other tags than plain:


                         

        • A lot of pages where users can put their own data and are allowed to 'style' it, gets abused and if not abused, is contesting for worst designed webpage of the year. This is so for bays, tubes, spaces and I'm kinda getting sick of it. If you want to display some data the tags mentioned above should be enough, if not, then you can put in a link to your own website so that it's clear it comes from another source.
      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    4. Re:Not an auction site... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      Should have used preview. What I meant was the stuff you see on the bottom when you submit to /., I am too lazy to change the < to &lt; and the > to &gt;

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  5. Where is your mind at? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    A hacker specializing in eBay cracks... may be exposing eBay Back Door"

    Sounds like the author has an anal fixation to me!

  6. Not the place to talk about exposed backdoors by spun · · Score: 4, Funny

    You just know what's gonna get posted soon...

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    1. Re:Not the place to talk about exposed backdoors by Tackhead · · Score: 1
      > You just know what's gonna get posted soon...

      In other news, Boston was shut down for the second time in a month due to LED billboards...

      Err: "Notice how we fit together?"
      Ignignokt: "Except this time I'm doing it as wide as I can!"
      Boston Mayor: "How can you treat this with kid gloves?"
      Berdovsky and Stevens: "That's a goat question, not a hair question."

  7. Maybe Not by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe they should use OpenBSD once and for all...

    Your choice in Operating System does little to mitigate bad coding. eBay has never been known for their technical wizardry and coding sophistication. It wouldn't surprise me if their back doors were wide open. (If you knew where to look.) For example, instead of having secure B2B messaging channels between different offices and departments, they might use machine formatted Internet Email that gets decoded by machine on the other side. Which would mean that a lot of "financial information" could be travelling over "their email system".

    10:1 says the guy is an employee who lost his gruntles.
    1. Re:Maybe Not by twiddlingbits · · Score: 2, Informative

      More likely someone put financial information in an email, or attached a spreadsheet of such, or got email containing their login information for the Accouting systems. Often when a new user gets setup the first thing they get is email and all the system access UIDs and passwords come via email. IF he can read that email he IS that person, the system knows no difference.

      Any firm that allows an EXTERNAL user to login to the company LAN or email server w/o a very secure two factor authentication (such as a RSA token or PGP, etc.) is really asking to be hacked. People use very low quality passwords and with a little "social engineering" you can find out lots.

    2. Re:Maybe Not by unboring · · Score: 3, Informative

      That might have been true in the past. But not so now.
      Read this which is a presentation from one of eBay's technical architects. It outlines the evolution of the technology and the challenges they face, as well as the huge volume of data!

    3. Re:Maybe Not by DesertBlade · · Score: 1

      Looks like ebay is run mostly on windows and IIS. See here

      --
      Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
    4. Re:Maybe Not by TubeSteak · · Score: 1

      10:1 says the guy is an employee who lost his gruntles.
      Maybe, but that isn't necessary.

      Eastern Europe has a lot of experienced computer haxors.
      He claims he's Romanian & the FBI is looking in Romania.

      Romania (pop ~22 million) is one of the top 10 biggest hubs for online crime.
      The only other small country in the top 10 is North Korea.

      They're up there with China, Russia & U.S.A.
      (USA #1 woo!)
      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    5. Re:Maybe Not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10:1 says the guy is an employee who lost his gruntles.

      Oh, that's disgusting. Why don't you try coming back when you feel like you can leave the foul-mouthed remarks out?
  8. Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by m.precursor · · Score: 1

    Yes, operating system choice does little to mitigate bad coding however certain architectures like ISAPI are very complex and error prone. It isn't bad coding as much as it is bad choice of architecture. I have a feeling that in the beginning, some of the developers were asserting that some things were a bad idea and got fired because they weren't in the MS camp. I would like to see a count of people who have successfully implemented a _complex_ ISAPI application without possible security issues coming up after deployment. I have built a few and I will tell you that it is not like building a php application. (But ISAPI is pretty damned scalable if done right. (aka you don't have to call CoInitialize())

    1. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by gbjbaanb · · Score: 4, Informative

      Funny how MS gets criticism on /. even though eBay has run on Java and Solaris since 2005.

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/13/ebay_sun_i bm/

      and

      http://sun.ebay.com/odcs/custom.htm?template=popup

      So, yeah I'l agree with you - its probably bad architecure that's at fault.

    2. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by AJWM · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Funny how MS gets criticism on /. even though eBay has run on Java and Solaris since 2005.

      Go to ebay.com's main page. Check out some of the links like "register" or "pay". See that "eBayISAPI.dll" in the cgi URL?

      They use Microsoft too, unless someone with a bizarre sense of humor has a file named eBayISAPI.dll on Solaris...

      --
      -- Alastair
    3. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Former ebay employee (hence anonymous) here.

      The VAST majority of ebay is Windows. Solaris is only used for Oracle on the very back end.

    4. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by AJWM · · Score: 1

      The VAST majority of ebay is Windows. Solaris is only used for Oracle on the very back end.

      Thanks for the inside info.

      --
      -- Alastair
    5. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One minor correction... Solaris is also used for search.

    6. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by linhux · · Score: 1

      It's more like someone has used URL rewriting to maintain backward compatibility. This presentation details the past and current architectures of eBay. Among other things, it states that they have replaced their entire C++ ISAPI application with J2EE. I think the presentation layer still is IIS, though (the paper mentions MSXML).

    7. Re:Don't blame bad coding for bad architecture. by WhoBeDaPlaya · · Score: 1

      Too bad you're no longer with them or you could ask the T&S department to stick it :|

  9. That might not be possible. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It might not be possible to fix their system.

    According to Netcraft, eBay appears to heavily use Microsoft software for their main North American operations. If that list is correct, it seems that most of their sites run on Windows 2000 or Windows Server 2003, using IIS 5.0.

    If these exploits are due to problems within Windows or IIS, it's basically outside of eBay's control as to whether or not such things get fixed. But we also have to question the competency of developers who would choose to base any significant, Web-based system on Windows. From a technical standpoint, it is insufficiently secure, and thus anybody in the know would avoid it. Web sites like eBay call for the use of high-quality, high-security operating systems like Linux, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX.

    1. Re:That might not be possible. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Netcraft confirms it.

  10. I can solve this for EBAY by AmigaHeretic · · Score: 2, Funny

    I told EBAY I could resolve this for them once they send the PS3 to my address in Nigeria. The payment through Paypal will not post to their account until after they have mailed the package. What don't they understand about this?

  11. Idiots and their web sites... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    Web sites like eBay call for the use of high-quality, high-security operating systems like Linux, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX.

    Right, because Apache magically prevents you from misconfiguring your servers and writing bad code?

    Both IIS 5.0 and IIS 6.0 can be easily secured, IIS 6.0 is simply more secure "as installed". I ran one of the biggest hacker targets on the Net on IIS, and every single moron who announced giddily that "we are so owned, we are so stupid" walked away with their head hung low. Web site security is a mix of good administration and secure code. Thats it. Choice of OS has surprisingly little to do with it.

    1. Re:Idiots and their web sites... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Both IIS 5.0 and IIS 6.0 can be easily secured, IIS 6.0 is simply more secure "as installed".

      Neither compare to the security of Apache. One of the main problems with IIS is that updates are so slow in coming after a vulnerability is discovered. And since you don't have the source code, you can't deal with the problem yourself. With Apache, patches are usually available within hours, sometimes even minutes, of a vulnerability being located. And you do have the source code, so you can immediately fix any problems.

      I ran one of the biggest hacker targets on the Net on IIS, and every single moron who announced giddily that "we are so owned, we are so stupid" walked away with their head hung low.

      There's a very good chance that your Microsoft-based servers were compromised, but you just weren't aware of it. One of the main problems with Windows is that it's possible (and quite easy) to run processes that aren't displayed in the Task Manager, nor are they listed on the Services configuration dialog. So in effect, your system can be running a trojan and you have no idea.

      UNIX systems, on the other hand, often display down to the thread level. Using ps, you can not only see every single process and thread that is running, but you can also see the complete path to the binary of that process. That way you can tell if somebody has hijacked your machine and is running a trojan under the name of another typical process (eg. httpd, sendmail, sh).

      Now, it's possible for the ps command to be altered to not display certain processes. But there are numerous rememdies. One is comparing the checksums of the ps binary on your system to that of the distribution or vendor. Another option is to rebuild it yourself, with source code from a known source.

      Regardless, it doesn't matter how good of an administrator you are. The technical nature of Windows systems leaves them wide open to vulnerabilities, including those that can't be easily detected.

    2. Re:Idiots and their web sites... by AJWM · · Score: 1

      Web site security is a mix of good administration and secure code.

      If you're talking about the website code and not the server code, it won't do a damn thing to help you if there's a buffer overflow in the server itself.

      Choice of OS has surprisingly little to do with it.

      Until somebody finds an exploit in your server code, and then it can make all the difference in the world.

      BTW, do you think that hackers who are after e.g. financial information are going to do something so silly as to announce that you were owned?

      --
      -- Alastair
  12. Re:That's why I didn't RTFA by FormOfActionBanana · · Score: 0, Redundant

    :-) That's really funny.

    --
    Take off every 'sig' !!
  13. ebay is a haven... by null+etc. · · Score: 2, Interesting
  14. What a Loser by madsheep · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know I cannot be the only person thinking "what a loser." Maybe this guy has some motive behind his actions, but if you're in the world of IT Security you are relatively familiar with Romanian whackers. They can take the most mundane abuse of something and claim it as hacking. This is a perfect example. Is someone cracking, phishing, or scamming their way onto eBay's message boards that much of a "prank" or "hack"? I do not think so. Does it spell out that there is a security weakness somewhere? Absolutely. You will find this in almost any large organization when someone specifically targets them, their employees, and/or users. I cannot begin to account for how many times various ISP have been publicly hacked/owned/pranked, far worse than this.

    Do that many people really get their news from eBay message boards? This guy is getting on account and posting messages. What is his next hack going to be? Use a stolen or fraudulently created account to post a *FAKE* auction? This guy can hardly penetrate systems at will. I think there's a reason he only seems to pop up at certain times. Classify this guy as another moron that needs to find something better to do.

    Hopefully this loser will join the ranks of Victor Faur. Not so much in notoriety, but in the loss of the right to use a computer or travel internationally. :)

    1. Re:What a Loser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pheebay.com has a thread going keeping track of the *thousands* of fake auctions vladuz posts or real currently running auctions he hijacks...he signs them either vladuz or zudlav, they keep chasing after him shutting them down...if nothing else I gotta hand it to vladuz for keeping ebaY employees on a wild goose chase.

  15. Their sign-in server needs some work too by Pedahzur · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I posted this a few days ago. E-bay customer service still hasn't shown any indication they intend to fix this problem: E-Bay's sing in server can assist phishers.

    --
    Joshua J. Kugler
  16. You're full of it... by encoderer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry man, but you're full of it. Apache out of the box _is_ more secure than IIS out of the box.

    But both of them can be secured properly.

    There are MILLIONS of IIS servers running sensitive information.

    You saying otherwise is FUD every bit as disgusting as anything Microsoft produces.

    Everyone needs to work together to bust the fud.

    1. Re:You're full of it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But both of them can be secured properly.

      Wrong. Unless you're Microsoft, and thus have the source code to IIS, you can never guarantee that it's even remotely close to being safe, let alone secure.

      There are MILLIONS of IIS servers running sensitive information.

      Yeah, and that's VERY unfortunate. Without the IIS source code being available to all users, no installation can be considered usable. That doesn't stop stupid people from using it, mind you. But just because millions of people run IIS servers, many of them likely hijacked without the owners/operators even knowing it, it doesn't mean that IIS is secure or can even be secured.

      You saying otherwise is FUD every bit as disgusting as anything Microsoft produces.

      What I say is built directly on fact and experience. If you're so sure that IIS is secure and so willing to use it, then I think you should give us all of your personal information, just so potential employers can be sure to avoid hiring you. Please post your full name, date of birth, place of birth, height, weight, skin color, and all other relevant information. Or do you not really have that much faith in IIS?

    2. Re:You're full of it... by 644bd346996 · · Score: 1

      There is no uncertainty or doubt about IIS being overall less secure than LAMP. What he was saying may be exaggerated, but it is not FUD.

    3. Re:You're full of it... by somersault · · Score: 1

      Errr.. code doesn't have to be open source to be 'safe' or secure. It may help the process of fixing bugs or finding exploits, but you do seem to be generalising rather a lot. As for your last paragraph, it makes no sense :p "Please tell us all your personal details so that we can make sure you don't get a job ever, whether or not you are right about this"..?

      --
      which is totally what she said
    4. Re:You're full of it... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      From harsh expericce, closed source code is vastly more likely to be hacked and vulnerable to hacking. The crackers do steal the source and the developer's notes: the more honest people don't have access to it and can contribute nothing. And the crackers only have to be lucky once, the designer or programmers have to be right and cautious all the time. Couple that need with the extremely poor GUI-based programming and feature extension styles of a lot of "software engineers", and you have a disaster hiding behind that closed source license. IIS is a wonderful example of the uselessly insecure result.

      And if you don't understand that last paragraph, please go ahdead and publish your personal details so we can show you how it works at your next job interview.

  17. He is right.. by gamekeeper · · Score: 1

    e-bay Has alot of issues.. What ever this individual is exposing,, Take it with integrity.. All they want to do is throw money at it, and find ways to screw anybody and everybody as much as possible.. 1 out of 6 people are millionaires on "paper", because of this e-bay engourages them to work at a significantly reduced pay rate. They do this because they are borde, and e-bay allows them to act accordingly. Meaning, because they have nothing to loose that they can make everyone's life hell around them, with out any quantifiable reprimand.. This corporate culture comes from above, like shit rolling down hill.

  18. explanation for ebay credit card fraud? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Security breaches on ebay servers might explain the rampant theft of people's credit card info on ebay. In most cases ebay are apparently still trying to make customers and sometimes banks pay for the losses rather than admit to their servers being compromised.

  19. Balkanisation by Bearhouse · · Score: 1

    FTA "but insist the servers that administer those functions are balkanized from databases" That proves it - he IS from Romania! But seriously, if Ebay's servers really are Balkanized, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkanize), "Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region into smaller regions that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other", maybe it's no wonder they have problems.

  20. Those Dirty Russians by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



    Go! boney m. rah-rah-rah bring back the czar! burn putin !!

  21. Wonder why ? by IT072110 · · Score: 1

    Is it the hacker is getting more experts or the system admin is less brilliant??

  22. Re:ebaY's supressing discussion for sure... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Read this:

    http://www.auctionguild.com/generic150.html/

    and this from a an ebaY user who goes by the handle firemeg (posted to a PheeBay.com discussion forum board http://www.pheebay.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1192 &postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=192&sid=60d0e05bbc 249bae59e846c158ab9524)

    Well, I went and did it... I got booted off the eBay community forums for 7 days. How convenient for them. I bet you're wondering what type of malicious thing I said to make them kick me off for a week...

    I simply suggested that all posters [to the ebaY discussion boards] put the number of what their post should be at the top of all new posts. (ie. so everyone could see how many posts eBay was pulling and how censored the board over there are). This was the exact post:

    My post should be: #357
    Let's all start to use the above line, along with the corresponding post number at the top of each of our posts...all the time!

    Heaven forbid we number our posts. Someone in the media might have a bit of proof how many posts go poof. I also got an email through my website from another user who had also gotten a 7 day suspension today. He more-or-less suggested that ebay be as quick to remove scam/fraudulent listings as they are to remove posts that they don't like.

    If you missed it, Blogging Stocks has another article on Vladuz that was published this afternoon: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/02/23/ebay-hack er-vladuz-carrying-on/
    _________________
    www.firemeg.com (firemeg is blogging how Meg Whitman needs fired and ebaY's cratering in general)

    PS you all should be shorting ebaY right now...the backlash against ebaY Team Legal is gonna get butt-ugly