After some months, I’ve finally gotten round to recovering Game File Format Central after a blatant attack using some exploit that destroyed our rotating backup. Because our host could not recover it, we had to dig deep to see if we got a backup somewhere. We found one, and it was old. But still, there’s a lot of information in there, so let’s just start from there again!
Yes, after a while, I have released a new version of the game mod tool. Mind, even The Duke agrees! From now on use is internet-only. Those of you with an older version may stick to that, no problem. The one out now is release candidate 1 alpha, so you know. Here’s the readme.txt:
Yes, the CSDb – Quantify Me analyses go on to show 6 countries dominating the C64 scene. Check the latest ramblings out right here.
The Game File Format Central, or XeNTaX WIKI, was attacked. This has caused some serious errors to it’s database. Therefore we have pulled it offline until we can go up again. We’re sorry that people exist that do these things. But hey, what can you do? There will always be such losers.
You can now follow XeNTaX’s proceedings as well on Facebook.
If you wondered why we were down, we suffered an attack by a bot. The last few days our host and us worked hard to remove the infection. We will spend some more time to update the code to latest versions as we go. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Webmaster note: We were hit by a virus called Gumblar. It was a more sophisticated virus than usual. It used the password stored in the scp client of one of our webmasters to gain access to our server. Once it had access, it added obfuscated and encoded javascript to all index.html, index.php, etc files, in order to spread the infection.
If you have visited the xentax main site or any of the xentax subdomains from the 25th of august to the 28th, it’s probably a good idea to run a virus scanner. If you’re a webmaster who stores ftp or scp passwords in a local client, check your site’s source code for suspicious scripts.
We are still cleaning up this shit, and are taking this opportunity to upgrade our forum and blog software as well. We will be busy with this at least until sunday, because as usual real life gets in the way: a friend of ours is getting married tomorrow.
Sorry for the downtime and the inconvenience it may have caused.
Final edit: The javascript exploits a weakness in adobe acrobat reader and flash, probably only in Windows. So if you run Linux or other Unix clones, you get to be smug and self satisfied that this particular virus doesn’t target you. If you run OSX you can remain clueless about this whole conversation.
The Commodore 64 Scene Database (CSDb) is the principal archive that collects all C64-scene related material. I’ve run a raw analysis of the collected data so far and plotted it against time (1982-2009). The CSDb lists 88395 releases from 16363 sceners that were in 5729 groups during this time period. There’s a lot to analyse there. Check it out at the special page: CSDb Analyses
We offered brienj a place of his own for his XBox Hacking portal! There you will find many tools to mod your favourite games, such as SvR2010 v2.0 for Smackdown vs Raw 2010. Move over there now and keep checking for updates!
Alera has his own subdomain at XeNTaX Game Research now! He has already posted his first blog on Biohazard and Outbreak’s *.NBD files. This will be his portal to publish more information on game formats!
Yes, there is now the public release of a brilliant 3d models tool! With it you can open many game models to explore and even alter (in the future). From Final Fantasy 7characters to Quake 2 whole maps, you can view them! Check out the rest of this post for all supported formats to date. Get the download at The Oasis. Discuss the release here at the Game Research Forum.
|
|