The Oxebridge website was down for approximately 12 hours, after the core database containing the site data became corrupted. A handful of articles were lost, but no other damage to the site was encountered. The site contains no user-identifiable data, so readers’ information was never at risk.
Lost content included articles posted after June 22, as well as a number of new THE AUDITOR strips. The comic strips have been restored, as well as one of the lost articles.
It is still not clear what caused the data corruption. Logs showed “bad bot” incursion attempts affecting a series of articles about a single subject, but the incursions were not successful. Such automated incursion attempts are routine, and Oxebridge’s security logs show such incursions are actually declining. It is also highly unlikely if any such incursions had been successful, hackers would have simply corrupted a database, rather than attempted wholesale defacing of the site.
A technical review of the incident remains underway.
