2much.net, the parent company of live video chat network LiveCamNetwork.com, has been hit with what company officials are describing as a cyber time bomb.
The bomb won’t allow the network’s chat hostesses to stay logged in to the service, effectually crippling the company’s live chat service. Furthering the problem, the saboteur manually deleted all of the source code needed to repair the particular being affected.
“At one point the system decides you are not who you say you are and logs you off,” 2much.net president and founder Mark Prince told AVNOnline.com, in describing the problem.
“When this happens the program just ends, but it’s not generating an error file, it just says okay, I’m done and then it stops.”
The attacks started slowly a little more than a week ago, which is when employees discovered the source code needed to repair the problem was missing, and hit their peak last week.
“When the first time bomb went off was when we realized we couldn’t repair the software. It’s just machine-readable code and the source code we would have used to tweak a problem was not on the server. It had been removed, presumably after the original was copied elsewhere,” said 2Much.net media and communications director Greg Jones.
The good news is that, as of Monday morning, the company’s live video chat services were running closer to normal.
“Last week was really tough, but this week we’re getting back to normal,” Prince said.
However, the system is still not entirely stable and Prince advised customers not to spend money on advertising or bringing girls into their studios.
“We estimate it’s going to take two weeks to fix it properly. Right now we’ve just patched it,” Prince said. “But it’s caused damage to our database. It’s not something we can restore from backups either because it would destroy the accounting.”
In the meantime, Jones said company officials are dealing with the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and plan to file criminal and civil lawsuits in both the United States and Canada.
Company officials believe a former employee perpetrated the attack.
“We know exactly who [did it],” Prince said.
Prior to the sabotage, at least two of 2much.net’s customers abruptly dropped the 2much system for another that closely resembled the company’s LiveCamNetwork 1.9. Prince said he can see 2much’s code and programming in the user-side interface of the new sites. In addition, the system was using the 2much video server and was authenticating users and performers via 2much.
In August, an employee of 2much was fired and the company dropped his chat site, saying that there were major violations of every term of its terms of service agreement.
Prince has hired specialists for support and repair of the LiveCamNetwork 1.9 software, as well as to expedite the construction of version 2.0, which the company plans to introduce in January.
“The new version of our chat software will take this situation into consideration,” Jones said. “That is, it’ll feature a revised back-up structure and more highly secure access, so no one person will have the power of life and death over any part of the network hierarchy – except Mark.”
