An Irish internet forum which had to shut down after an attack on its user database has been restored.
Boards.ie, which had to shut down on Thursday afternoon, was restored on Friday evening. Part of the database which included members' usernames, email addresses and obfuscated passwords was accessed. The site had to send nearly 300,000 emails to users warning them of the breach and advising them to change their passwords. The site started life as a forum for the computer game Quake in 1998 and has more than 500 forums on a range of topics. According to the most recent ABC internet traffic statistics in November, Boards.ie had more than 20m page views, averaging more than 1.1m page views a day. Boards.ie said that an administrative account had been compromised and used to insert malicious software, which dumped the user table to a public directory from which it was downloaded. Irish police, the Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes and an independent security consultant have been investigating the attack. The site said users who used their Boards.ie password on other sites with the same username/email should change it there as well. During the time the site was down users were kept updated on the social networking site Twitter about developments. Site users have welcomed the return of Boards.ie with one poster noting: "Thank God - my caffeine-free solidarity is over. I had already fallen off my chair in work."
