The Oxebridge site was down for about 36 hours recently due to a “unsophisticated but pernicious” attack carried out by an individual, or individuals, involved with the Elsmar quality forum website. One individual is known, and has been reported to police in Europe, who were already investigating the subject for an unrelated criminal action involving similar cybersecurity issues.
The two Elsmar “anti-Oxebridge” websites created by Elsmar owner “John Peachfarm” at oxebridge.co and osteinfo.com openly gloated about the hack, and are intermittently being updated with new information, presumably by Peachfarm. That information is being collected for the investigation. “John Peachfarm” is a pseudonym used by Elsmar activists and forum moderators.
Oxebridge has migrated the entire site to new server hardware with advanced protections, at an increased monthly server cost. Upon advice of legal counsel and our IT experts, we will not comment more on the technical aspects of the hack until any investigations are completed and arrests made.
As of about 0900 Eastern US time, the Oxebridge site was temporarily slowed by a new dedicated denial of service (DDoS) attack, confirmed with our server support staff. The site was inaccessible for about 10-15 minutes, but the new server hardware worked as expected and prevented a complete shutdown. As of this posting, the attack appears to be continuing, but our server personnel are physically monitoring the activities in real time.
Elsmar moderators have, for seventeen years, decried the Oxebridge site, and have made repeated calls for it to be shut down. Participants, moderators and advertisers of the Elsmar site include ISO 9001 certification bodies, auditors and consultants, who view Oxebridge’s reform efforts as an impediment to their business. These new activities appear to show that the Elsmar supporters are now extending their efforts to criminal actions to achieve their end.
Advertisers on the Elsmar site include UL (Underwriters Labs), PQ Systems / Gagepack, EASE Inc., Dozuki, Sequence Software and Discus. One such advertiser, Sunday Business Systems, has referred to Oxebridge as a “very narrow minded asshole” and declared it is proud to support Elsmar.
Oxebridge was declared the prevailing party in a defamation and extortion lawsuit against Elsmar, filed in US Federal court. The case is pending a second contempt of court complaint, which will be amended to include recent defamatory comments made on the two Peachfarm websites.
