ICU.ie site temporarily down for updates

Retd.LoyolaCpt

Have been told it should only be an issue for next hour or so. Sorry for the inconvenience

Mod edit - the proper ICU.ie site is at http://176.58.112.239/

2bts

...and appears to be back up now.

historian

Both the official websites seem to have gone missing. I hope someone hasn't forgotten to put a coin in the meter.

cdeb

Both working for me?

historian

Maybe try refresh;). See the attachment for what I'm getting on www.icu.ie.

cdeb

Nope - still getting the regular site.

Last news update today.

Dunno what you're clicking into?

historian

cdeb wrote: »

Dunno what you're clicking into?

Not sure what you mean by this. If you're asking if I'm typing in the ICU website URL correctly, then yes I am - and I've used multiple browsers, used my bookmarks and typed in manually. I'm not having any sort of general problem with other websites.

If you're asking what I'm actually getting through to - well, it appears to be some sort of web provider default page. I'm guessing the ICU has bought its domain name from this provider.

If you're having no problems, then it's a bit of a mystery.

cdeb

historian wrote: »

Not sure what you mean by this. If you're asking if I'm typing in the ICU website URL correctly, then yes I am - and I've used multiple browsers, used my bookmarks and typed in manually.

Yep, that's the question alright. Just I don't see what else could be causing the error.

So - really can't explain what's happening! Even the link you provided is working grand for me. Doesn't make any sense.

HaraldSchmidt

The domain name expired yesterday. It has been reregistered today, but until the DNS servers are replicated across the internet, you will continue to see this message. At the latest it should be back within 48 hours.

I suspect, it will take about 12 hours.

macelligott

HaraldSchmidt wrote: »

The domain name expired yesterday. It has been reregistered today, but until the DNS servers are replicated across the internet, you will continue to see this message. At the latest it should be back within 48 hours.

I suspect, it will take about 12 hours.

I've had no trouble accessing the main ICU website. However, I have been unable to load the ratings page either yesterday or today (Wednesday 16/12/15)

macelligott

Now I'm unable to log onto the ICU site as well ��

sinbad68

Today, For me, Access to ICU main site is intermittent , rating site No access at all. ICU should be aware of it's domain expiry date, was No email sent warning of expiry date ?, at least no one else jumped in and registered the site when ICU dropped the ball.I registered my own site for 10 years.

sinbad68

sinbad68 wrote: »

I registered my own site for 10 years.

Going for 10 year deal and choosing ".com" instead of ".ie" is over %66 cheaper .

Tim Harding

macelligott wrote: »

Now I'm unable to log onto the ICU site as well ��

Also I cannot get the site today though I had no problems before.
Is the previous webmaster to blame for this situation?

Tychoo

Here we go again!!!!!! The truth will come out

HaraldSchmidt

Firstly, I would like to apologise to all ICU members who are unable to see the website. The actual server is running fine and all the data on it is safe and secure. The executive are doing everything in their power to fix this situation.

If you want to see our main website, the simplest solution is type http://176.58.112.239 into your browser, and you will be able to see the site.

However, for full functionality of that site, and access to ratings.icu.ie, you will need to alter the /etc/hosts file on your machine. This is relatively straight forward, but not for the faint of heart.

The ICU web sites (www.icu.ie and ratings.icu.ie) are hosted on 176.58.112.239. Currently there is a
problem with the domain name servers dotted around the internet. This problem means that the domain icu.ie
is not attached to our server, and therefore browsers will not find an IP address to go to when someone
tries to visit icu.ie.

If you want to see the site, you can explicitly tell your computer which IP address to use for icu.ie and ratings.icu.ie

Instructions for Windows 7, 8 and 10 Users:
Right-click Notepad and select Run as administrator. Click Continue on the Windows needs your permission UAC window.
In the File name field, type C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts
Then add the following lines at the bottom of the file:
176.58.112.239 www.icu.ie
176.58.112.239 icu.ie
176.58.112.239 ratings.icu.ie

Now save the file, and you're done.


Instructions for Linux users:
Run the following command from the terminal: sudo vi /etc/hosts
Now add the following lines to the bottom of the file and save and exit:
176.58.112.239 www.icu.ie
176.58.112.239 icu.ie
176.58.112.239 ratings.icu.ie

And you're done.


Instructions for Mac OS X users:
From a terminal window, type the following command: sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
Now add the folling lines to the bottom of the file and save and exit:
176.58.112.239 www.icu.ie
176.58.112.239 icu.ie
176.58.112.239 ratings.icu.ie

Now try going to www.icu.ie in your browser. If you are still not seeing the site, then you need to
flush the DNS cache. On OS X Lion and OS X Mountain Lion, do the following:
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

On OS X Mavericks:
dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

HaraldSchmidt

Official article on the ICU website: http://176.58.112.239/articles/520.
It's the same text as I posted above.

And yes I do appreciate the irony.

sinbad68

If you go to ICU website

http://www.icu.ie/

, it says "welcome to Irish chess united !", someone is taking the mickey

Tim Harding

sinbad68 wrote: »

If you go to ICU website

http://www.icu.ie/

, it says "welcome to Irish chess united !", someone is taking the mickey

I see that too.

If this has been done by the former webmaster, then there is only one course of action - a life ban, which is long overdue.

sinbad68

sinbad68 wrote: »

someone is taking the mickey

I think I should have said taking the mick as I didn't follow mickey by a name ?

Tim Harding wrote: »

I see that too.

It is obvious, the executive does NOT have control over www.icu.ie website, may be it would be easier to register another web address and hopefully ICU Data is safe and can be put there rather than start a prolong cyber war over the ICU.ie web address ?.

2bts

See

HaraldSchmidt wrote: »

The actual server is running fine and all the data on it is safe and secure.

Tim Harding

Their suggestion to access the sites by inputting the IP address does work for me.
Request http://176.58.112.239/ instead of www.icu.ie

See http://176.58.112.239/articles/520

sinbad68

Major NEW development on ICU website !!!

http://www.icu.ie/

Tim Harding

sinbad68 wrote: »

Major NEW development on ICU website !!!

http://www.icu.ie/

The reference to a certain problem at the last olympiad amounts to a confession that the person causing the mayhem is none other than the previous P.R.O. and webmaster.

I have kept a screenshot.

Now the hacker cannot plausibly deny that he did it, which was apparently the case when he posted an attack on me on the ICU website in September and pretended that a named ICU member had done it. That traduced person received an apology; I never did.

The hacker I am talking about assaulted me (mildly) and threatened me (verbally) at the agm and there were witnesses.

So after this self-incriminatory statement, there should now be no difficulty in finding him guilty as charged and preferably banned for life as I suggested earlier. His previous 5-year ban should never have been rescinded. At the least, the balance of that ban should immediately be enforced pending the kind of due process that he and his pals denied Mark Orr.

He is right, though, that the new webmaster has questions to answer.

cdeb

I'm confused. When I go on to icu.ie, I just get that the page won't load. When I put on the IP address, I get the regular icu site, with the last article being the workaround one posted here also.

It's happened before that some people see one thing and others see another, which I don't understand at all.

Do I need to go through the notebook edit mentioned to see what Tim/sinbad are talking about?

Or would Tim be able to post the screenshot he took?

sinbad68

cdeb wrote: »

I'm confused.
Or would Tim be able to post the screenshot he took?

I pm you all the stuff on icu homepage , got it ?

cdeb

Yup, thanks sinbad.

Not really any doubt who's behind that!

anchor4208

I don't have enough posts to allow me to post full urls, but the old ICU site that most of us have bookmarked begins with https. The new offending one begins with http

L1m1tless

Sneaky move.

Tim Harding

anchor4208 wrote: »

I don't have enough posts to allow me to post full urls, but the old ICU site that most of us have bookmarked begins with https. The new offending one begins with http

However the difference is not recognised by browsers - at least not the two I have. If I type "www.icu.ie" into Chrome or MS Edge I get the rogue page. If I explicitly start with https:// I get an error message in both browsers.

The person doing this may think it is just a prank, but it is malicious and was evidently based on his prior knowledge of when the domain renewal was due and he somehow managed to interfere with ICU's renewal process. Exactly how will perhaps be explained to us someday in the next AONTAS report?

Meantime this interference with the ICU's principal means of communicating with its members comes under the heading of bringing Irish chess into disrepute, surely?

Once the executive have managed to restore normal service, members will expect prompt action to be taken against the offender and not some long-drawn-out tribunal.

cdeb

icu.ie is now working again as the rogue site. First news item tagged with "Harmony and hugs" posted by Colm Daly. Or is this what everyone was seeing yesterday?

Open and shut case so.

Tychoo

The hacker has clearly lost it. Time to remove this person for every aspect of Irish chess (Life time ban).

ComDubh

The ICU site is indeed working fine, but the ICU have temporarily lost control of the www.icu.ie URL. The .ie domain is very tightly controlled, and no doubt the .ie registry folk will return control to the rightful owners shortly.

Very poor display from the hacker. He should not be part of a union that he tries to damage this way.

L1m1tless

No hacking involved, just a sneaky registration of the domain name on expiry date. Still a nasty thing to do.

Lecale

Sounds like a slap on the wrist is due for not renewing the domain name registration. Poor start there. At the same time, have to agree that the man who nicked it, and posted that crap deserves a ban. Is that the way to show support for your national organisation, or a way to show that you are a childish wee dickhead?

mikhail

cdeb wrote: »

I'm confused. When I go on to icu.ie, I just get that the page won't load. When I put on the IP address, I get the regular icu site, with the last article being the workaround one posted here also.

It's happened before that some people see one thing and others see another, which I don't understand at all.

The system that decodes a website address like www.icu.ie and turns it into the location of the server is not one centralised thing, so when a change is made, there can be inconsistencies while some parts have been updated and others haven't.

Tychoo wrote: »

The hacker has clearly lost it. Time to remove this person for every aspect of Irish chess (Life time ban).

Oh, he'd just lap up the attention and spend the next two years wasting the time of the ICU's volunteers with appeals and threats like he did before.

chesstity

Hacker, that's very derogatory and inflammatory, this is not a hack. It's clearly a case of the ICU (the new breed, with some old dogs) not keeping their eye on the ball long enough to realise that their domain name subscription was up, therefore allowing anyone in the world the opportunity to buy up any available domains, of which the icu.ie became one such domain. He's entitled to it and has done nothing wrong despite your scurrilous accusation. (Hacker) thought no personal comments were allowed on here ?????

ComDubh

chesstity wrote: »

therefore allowing anyone in the world the opportunity to buy up [...] the icu.ie [...] domain.

I've registered .ie domains a few times. Unless the rules have changed, it's a long process where you have to prove your rights to the name. It's not like for .com or .net where anyone can buy an unused name. So the story is probably not as simple as you say.

mikhail

chesstity wrote: »

Hacker, that's very derogatory and inflammatory

I agree that it's inaccurate. It implies a degree of technical skill to his petty malicious act. What he's doing is called cybersquatting.

Chess_Coach

So what is really going on here ? Just now I saw that icu.ie is not in hands of the ICU is that correct please ? I have heard that Webmaster is doing some work but not that domain name was taken if that correct of course. So it could be anyone really that could buy domain name of the ICU is it ?

chesstity

ComDubh wrote: »

I've registered .ie domains a few times. Unless the rules have changed, it's a long process where you have to prove your rights to the name. It's not like for .com or .net where anyone can buy an unused name. So the story is probably not as simple as you say.

It's not hacking.

chesstity

chesstity wrote: »

It's not hacking.

He must have proved he has a right to the name. Hey where are all those members who would have been all over the former executive if something like this happened last year......your all very quiet over there😀

rob51

ComDubh wrote: »

I've registered .ie domains a few times. Unless the rules have changed, it's a long process where you have to prove your rights to the name. It's not like for .com or .net where anyone can buy an unused name. So the story is probably not as simple as you say.

Agreed. It took me a week or so to prove my right to move my own ie website to another web host earlier this year. So it suggests that control of the registration was not fully returned to the current ICU committee. As ComDubh says you cannot just buy an unused ie domain name.

sinbad68

What makes it worse is that all this is happening in xmas time which is supposed to be season of goodwill.

The proper ICU website link is

http://176.58.112.239/

The above link should be pinned & locked on top of this page on it's own thread for ICU members to be able to see where the proper ICU site link is till things are sorted.It would have been better it had a name instead of bunch of numbers, as I said before.

GARDA must be informed by executive if ANY laws are found to broken( even if not sure, No harm to make a complaint and let garda investigate, mentioning the huge disruption to chess community). Prepaid credit card, fake email address & IP address spoofing are all likely linked in this case. Executive needs to take decisive action anyone found responsible and examine it's own shortcomings.

ComDubh

For what it's worth, I said 'hacker' as it seemed to me that the ICU's ISP account, not the web site, had been hacked, i.e. accessed and misused by a miscreant. Anyway, this is all a bit tangential. I feel sorry for the ICU committee members who have to tidy up this mess.

Ballynafeigh Chess

Another grotesquely puerile action by the never ending cancer of Irish chess. Even when the current board under the stewardship of the current chairman have proved through their actions since the AGM that they bore no ill will and held no appetite for recrimination, other twisted individuals have graphically demonstrated once again that they just can’t let it rest.

This relentless irritation and his sycophantic cheerleaders have absolutely no interest in encouraging harmony within chess, once chastised by the membership they publically announced their withdrawal from involvement in discussions about chess organisation in Ireland and promised to embrace the new horizons envisaged by the current board. There was even a declaration of sincerity to start by cleaning up the obnoxious social media pages used to slander any chess player who opposed them.

Yeah well how did that go for us all? It lasted less than a fortnight and the comments on social media started again! However this website hijacking is a sickening twist by the contortionist of Irish chess. This was not a spur of the moment event; this was a meticulously calculated action that took considerable effort to perpetrate. Lurking in the shadows waiting for the clock to count down just to display a sorrowful hatred for the current board and in particular in an attempt to belittle Jonathan O’Connor is unfathomable. For clarity I would like to inform the hijacker and his micro entourage that individually or as a collective they are not worthy to stand in the same room as Jonathan O’Connor. He has in abundance what they are completely devoid of, integrity charm sophistication generosity intelligence and compassion. Jonathan O’Connor has been a rock for Irish chess whereas this micro clan have only shown themselves to be what crawls out from under a rock!

This hijacker sullies everything that he has ever involved with and immediately smears or pours scorn on anything he’s not involved with. This individual has ceased to be a benefit of any kind to chess on this island a very long time ago and I personally think it is high time that he should be removed from all Irish organised events from this moment on. There can be and should be no place within our chess family for such a viperous and hostile entity to exist or to have the opportunity to spread his illness to others.

cdeb

sinbad68 wrote: »

The proper ICU website link is

http://176.58.112.239/

The above link should be pinned & locked on top of this page on its own thread for ICU members to be able to see where the proper ICU site link is till things are sorted.

It's now in the links sticky, and also in post 1 of this thread, with the thread title changed to reflect this.

Sparks

sinbad68 wrote: »

GARDA must be informed by executive if ANY laws are found to broken( even if not sure, No harm to make a complaint and let garda investigate, mentioning the huge disruption to chess community). Prepaid credit card, fake email address & IP address spoofing are all likely linked in this case. Executive needs to take decisive action anyone found responsible and examine it's own shortcomings.

CMod Note:
Sinbad, if you're going to make silly demands of a group you don't run, could you avoid using here to post nonsense that verges on defamatory when you do so please? "Prepaid credit card" is not in any way illegal; "fake email address" - either it's an address that can receive email or it's not and if it's not then the ISP would notice their emails weren't being responded to; and there's absolutely no evidence of IP address spoofing happening here, because what's happened here has as much to do with IP address spoofing as a cardiac arrest has to do with the correct procedure for parking a car.

And as to the accusations, yes, whomever did this identified themselves as a named individual and many of those who've met that named individual in the past seem to find that claim credible, as do I, but that's not what the word "proof" means.

Either the ISP or the IEDR themselves could have dealt with the individual named as a member of the ICU executive in the past and that could have confused matters in any subsequent payment of fees or control of services. This is a deliberate attack on a group with malice aforethought by someone who would in all liklihood have needed to have privileged information and status with that group in the past - that kind of act is hard to prevent in any amateur group and if you worked with larger groups or companies in this area you would know they often have very strict policies that are awkward to work with purely to prevent this kind of situation arising.

It is also a bit more serious than simple domain squatting because of the defamatory content of the site that was put up, because of the IEDR conditions relating to the domain name, and because of the amount of perfidity required to carry out this sort of thing. I'm not a solicitor, but this is the sort of thing they earn their living sorting out in a court, and if I'm reading this correctly, there are at least four seperate legal entities with a claim to bring against the person who did this on seperate legal grounds.

Tychoo

It's seems the web site is back. Time to end this maddens.

Tim Harding

Tychoo wrote: »

It's seems the web site is back. Time to end this maddens [sic].

I am still getting the funny picture of Jonathan. I suppose it will take a day or two for all name servers to catch up.

cdeb

I see the thread on the website on the facebook - which included a reply from Colm - has quietly been deleted.