EPUBZone - hacked / disposition? (URGENT)

Hi Pub SC folks,

 

Sarah Hilderley who was coordinator for EPUBZone pre IDPF-W3C combination
recently noticed and reported that the site seems to have been hacked,
showing non-related content and ads. Looks moderately benign but not good
and there may be nastier malware lurking under the surface (so if you visit
http://www.epubzone.org/ don't click on anything!!).


This website and domain was an explicit part of asset transfer from IDPF to
W3C. Early last year (immediately after combination) W3C Comm team didn't
feel it made sense for us to maintain it as a separate identity given the
resource cost of so doing, so it's just been getting stale while it was
unclear what to do with it.

 

Given the hack, we now urgently need to decide and execute on a transition.
We could shut it down altogether, for example redirecting the URL to
w3.org/publishing, we could statically archive it (presumably an earlier
backup as untangling the malware from the Drupal CMS could be challenging)
as is planned with IDPF.org (at the moment IDPF.org is hosted on the same
infrastructure as epubzone.org so we are just lucky it hasn't been hacked
too. yet - that's a ticking fuse as it the ongoing hosting cost), or we
could identify a third party who wanted to take it on as an independent site
(so far in my understanding no one has offered to do that, but we haven't
proactively asked anyone either). I believe W3C management isn't fussed
about the direction as long as within the parameters that it won't have
ongoing cost to W3C since we'd rather direct our limited resources
elsewhere.

 

This was an agenda topic at a SC call a while back but I believe it was a
call I had to miss and the minutes didn't note anything specific. So I don't
know if it was discussed or if not if anyone has any strong opinions about
it. 

 

We could temporarily take the site down to avoid spreading malware and if
there's no consensus relatively immediately I think that's the path we
should take to avoid spreading malware and giving EPUB a black eye.


Thanks,

 

--BillM