UPDATE:
The issue explained below has now been resolved and the server will be back online later today (Wed 19th Apr) with no loss of characters or other data - everything will be as it was


Dear Players,

On 16th April the server that hosts the game was injected with a ransomware that modified all files with strong encryption, making them unusable until decrypted, along with a demand for several thousands of dollars to decrypt them. The worst part is that the remote share backups were also found and encrypted.

There is currently no known method to decrypt these files without a specific key of numbers that only the hacker knows and is trying to extort money for. I have spoken to them and tried to come to some arrangement, but I simply do not have the kind of money they are demanding, and my offers of smaller amounts have so far been ignored. I'm also concerned that agreeing to pay would just motivate them, or others, to try it again. I have absolutely no idea why they would waste their time targeting such a small game community in the first place.

I want to assure you that our server was secure until recently, and has withheld from constant attacks in the past years. I won't pretend to know how this was done, but there were leaks of new hacking tools earlier this month, April 14, and patches from Microsoft that supposedly fixed "most" of them. I can only guess that they might have used these. There are reports from many servers with the same ransom demands on security sites right now, but unfortunately no known fixes other than risking paying the hacker.


WHAT NOW?
All encrypted files have now been recovered from the server and have been copied and backed up with a hope that a decryptor is released by security sites, but we can't keep the server offline indefinitely so this leaves me with no choice but to reinstall the server using the latest backup I have on my local machine, which unfortunately is from early December. I do not store backup files from the server on my local machine, but luckily I downloaded the database in December to update my local test server database.

Using this old database does mean that we will lose the last 4 months of data including any new characters made, character levelups, item drops and purchases, enhancements, cards, quest progress, points gained, guild member changes, pets - basically everything. Your characters will be as they were on 9th December.

I will do all I can to help players get back up and running but I haven't decided exactly how that will work just yet. I want to get the server back up and running as a priority and then I will consider exactly what can be done about missing characters, items etc.


DONATIONS
Any donations made for Scrub's Moolah from 9th December will be resent to the character it was sent to originally as long as they still exist (ie, were created before 9th December), and players that made characters after 9th December and donated can contact me with their information so we can get it sorted out and resent. Thankfully all donation information is stored on another server.


If you have any concerns or questions please go ahead and ask, but right this moment I do not know what will be done about missing characters and items. Please give me some time to get the server back up and running and then we can discuss our options.