Recent Incident

[annoying furry 6,264 / 62,597]

Hello everybody.

 

We’ve recently become aware of a violation of our privacy/security protocols on the part of former members of the Prop Hunt staff team. The loading screen for the Prop Hunt server was moved to an external web server outside of GFL infrastructure without authorization. The web server was controlled by a former member of staff who was demoted for violations of the Code of Conduct prior to the incident. This is problematic because web servers are typically configured to log basic information about the requests they receive, which would include the IP address of a connecting player and their Steam ID in this case. As such, anybody who joined the Prop Hunt server during the time that this loading screen was active may have had their IP address and Steam ID logged by a third party.

 

We cannot determine exactly how long this loading screen was in place, however, I suspect that this was put in place shortly after we upgraded our web machine in February of this year as the reason cited for making this change was that the old site stopped working at this time (though the proper course of action would’ve been to report the issue to myself instead of moving the site off GFL infrastructure, which was not done). We also cannot determine whether or not these requests were actually logged as we do not have the ability to audit web servers that are not controlled by us, however, we feel that it is necessary to post this in the interest of transparency.

 

Both of the individuals responsible left staff a little while ago, however, this was recently discovered by @Salad while inspecting the server in light of a recent action taken to disrupt the operation of the Prop Hunt server. The loading screen was removed as soon as it was discovered. We also decided that it was appropriate that both of the individuals involved be banned due to this and other, unrelated considerations. We are currently evaluating further actions that we can take to prevent similar occurrences in the future.