Dale_Husband

On April 25, 2010, it was reported that the Unitarian Universalist Bahai blog’s web address was somehow redirected to a Universalist Christian web page made by Eric Stetson, who also leads the Unitarian Bahai movement:

//www.uubahai.com/

Eric noted what happened and his efforts to repair the damage with the following messages at the Unitarian Bahai Yahoo group:

//groups.yahoo.com/group/unitarian-bahai/message/1683

Dear Friends,

UUBahai.com has been hacked and replaced with a website promoting my book on
Christian Universalism. I am going to contact the hosting company and tell them
about the hack and ask them how it can be fixed and if any of the content that
was on the UU Bahai Blog can be restored or if all of it has been permanently
deleted by the hacker.

It appears that somebody out there with a lot of computer ability -- and a
willingness to break the law -- wants to hurt the Unitarian Bahai cause. Very
sad.

Eric S.

All I can say is WOW. It is a total hack. Somebody must have gotten my
passwords somehow. I have no idea how.

I'm not even sure how to fix the problem. I will have to contact the internet
hosting company and inform them of the problem and see how it can be fixed.

Apparently this also means that somebody with very proficient computer skills is
working very hard to undermine the Unitarian Bahai cause.

I am blown away.

Eric S.

Dear Friends,

The past two days, I have been communicating with my web hosting company both by
email and phone, several times, trying to get a straight answer about what
happened to uubahai.com and how and when it can be fixed. The company doesn't
seem to want to explain in any detail WHY the problem occurred or WHEN things
will be back to normal; all they will say is that they had a problem with a hard
drive and some data was missing as a result. If they know or suspect it was
hacking, probably they don't want to admit that, for fear of losing business.
Here is what I did find out:

1. The hard drive that was hosting uubahai.com was shut down, and they had to
switch their server to a backup drive, which was supposed to have a backup of
all data. However, some data went missing. They don't know why some data was
missing and other data was not.

2. The specific files that went missing from uubahai.com were the ones that
enable the Wordpress blog to run.

3. Fortunately, the database of the blog (i.e. its stored content) was not
affected.

4. Somehow uubahai.com was set to run the content from
christian-universalism.com, another website that the same hosting company hosts
for me.

5. Even when I manually restored the missing Wordpress files, which should have
enabled the UU Bahai blog to start running again, uubahai.com still was
displaying the contents of christian-universalism.com.

6. So far, despite my repeated requests, the tech support staff of the hosting
company has not restored uubahai.com to be able to run its own content instead
of christian-universalism.com. They were not willing to give me an estimated
time when it will be restored.

7. I run two other websites besides uubahai.com on the same server at this web
hosting company. Neither of them have been affected at all.

8. I asked if any of their other customers have been affected and in what way.
They told me that some people have had problems accessing their email, or lost
some email, when they had to switch to a backup hard drive for the server (the
same thing also happened to me). No mention was made of anyone else
experiencing the kind of problem that happened to uubahai.com.

I suspect that this could be a case of hacking which may have caused the company
to automatically shut down and reformat the hard drive of one of their servers,
switch to a backup, and lose some data in the process. I can't prove that, but
it seems to be a likely explanation.

It is very suspicious that the uubahai.com website lost files needed to run the
blog literally the day after I told everyone on this mailing list that I was on
vacation and unable to access the internet regularly. It is also very
suspicious that three days later, the web hosting company still has not restored
uubahai.com to functionality, despite the fact that I manually uploaded the
missing files necessary for the blog to work again. I have to wonder whether
they have frozen uubahai.com because of a security breach that they might be
investigating. It is extremely unusual for a large and reputable web hosting
company, as this one is, to allow somebody's website to be continuously down or
frozen for three consecutive days. All of these things raise huge red flags in
my mind.

In any case, the data that was on the site can be restored, because I don't
think the database of the blog has been affected (though I haven't looked at it
carefully, but it seems okay at first glance); and even if some data in the
database turns out to be missing, the blog articles were still in Google cache
and both Dale and I have saved them.

Eric S.

//groups.yahoo.com/group/unitarian-bahai/message/1708

Another Update:

An admin at the web hosting company has finally unfrozen the domain, so now
uubahai.com displays its real content (at least the front page). However,
unfortunately, the database of the blog HAS been corrupted. The links to the
articles do not work, and some important files are missing from the database --
including the file that enables the admin (me) to log in to do anything on the
blog!

Therefore, the entire blog will need to be reinstalled. I may be able to import
some of the data from the old database into the new installation of the blog,
but I don't know how to do that so I'll have to study up on it. One possibility
would be to just start over from scratch with a clear database and re-post all
the articles and comments that had been previously posted, rather than messing
around with two different databases. I suspect this is the easier option, but
I'll have to see.

Either way, it'll be a lot of work to get the blog back up and running in a
truly functional way. I probably won't get to it until this weekend.

Eric S.

As an Honorable Skeptic, I am outraged at the idea that anyone claiming to be a Baha'i would pull such a contemptible stunt. Are they so cowardly that they would resort to sneak attacks to suppress freedom of speech? Only tyrants and bullies do such things. Such desparate tactics do far more damage to the credibility of the Haifa based Baha'i Faith than any actual criticism of it would!

Speaking of which:

//iranian.com/main/blog/dale-husband/independent-investigation-truth-baha-i-case-hypocrisy

//iranian.com/main/blog/jamileghrari/unitarian-and-universalist-bahais

//iranian.com/main/blog/jamileghrari/why-we-need-unitarian-bahai-faith

YOU WILL SILENCE US ONLY BY KILLING US, HYPOCRITES!

Dale Husband