Hi everyone,

I’m in shock!

This morning I read some sad news concerning A-EON Technology. Apparently someone hacked their account at several Amiga forums, including Amigaworld.net, Amigans.net, Amiga.org and EAB (English Amiga Board). The hacker then posted news about the company closing shop, which is not true at all. This did of course create a lot of commotion and anxiety among members of the Amiga community, myself included.

Fortunately Trevor Dickinson, the head of A-EON Technology, discovered what had happened and could confirm that the company is still going strong. AmigaKit, the lead distributor of the AmigaOne X1000, did the same. The thread with the fake news can be read at EAB.

Here’s the message from Amigaworld.net about their forum being hacked:

Dear users,

We are sorry to admit it but it seems AmigaWorld.Net was hacked today. Most likely it wasn’t our server the hacker got the passwords from, but we have no idea of knowing so far. We suggest everyone changes their password as quickly as possible.

We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Regards,
AmigaWorld.Net staff

Here’s the message from Amigans.net about the same topic:

Note to all Amigans.net members: Robert Trevor Dickinson’s password was hacked somewhere, the user used it to post as him on Amigaworld, Amiga.org and Amigans.net. Until we can establish where the security breach was, I would ask all our members to change their password on Amigans.net and anywhere else that the same password is used.

Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause

Mikey C

I feel sorry for Trevor and I wish him the best of luck with this horrible situation. I’d like to state clearly that A-EON Technology is still up and running – the news about folding was a direct result of tasteless hacking. I’ve included a message Trevor posted on Amigans.net that confirms this:

Quick note to all Amigans. It seems my accounts on Amigans (and Amiga.org and AmigaWorld.net) were hacked by person or persons unknown.

Anyway, thanks to the speedy administrators I an now back in control of my Amigans.

Happy New Year

TrevorD

Now for the question: Who is this hacker?

I fear it is someone in the Amiga community, as he or she must possess a lot of knowledge about the current state of the Amiga to come up with a post like that. Such a news-hoax can ruin a business, so it is very serious stuff. 😦 It sickens me that people do things like this. 😦

Let’s be happy that the situation is returning to normal again – please remember to change your passwords though.. I’m going to do that right now. Better safe than sorry!