Hi there, Im request of some urgent advice, My site www.medevilwars.com has recently been hacked, the hacker gained access to my cpanel and copied the whole site and has now uploaded it on his site www.medevilrpg.com The Hacker 'Kosta Hanna' added me to msn after I posted a topic on the sitepoint formus (www.sitepoint.com) requesting a review about my site www.medevilwars.com. He kept asking me about where my site was hosted and who my domain registrar is. I told him nothing as I was very suspicous why he was asking so many questions. Yesterday I reallized he changed the paypal address on one of the pages on my site www.medevilwars.com/buycredits.php so that all payments went to his account. He's now copied all my files and mysql databases (the whole script) and has uploaded it on www.medevilrpg.com From checking my awstats today (17/11/06) I noticed some traffic from another site www.medevilrpg.com which is how I find out about this. Evidence of the hack is shown by looking at the title of every page on www.medevilrpg.com - you can see it says 'medevil wars' still Also my site was made 1 month before www.medevilrpg.com was made. This can be verified by looking up the whois for both domains. Further evidence is there by looking at my hall of fame page www.medevilwars.com/fame.php On this page, at the bottom it says created and coded by me (James Hakim) and my friend (Josh Buckley) The hacker has also uploaded this file whilst he uploaded all the other files: www.medevilrpg.com/fame.php You can see that our names are still on the site. Also on the title of every page of www.medevilrpg.com it is written medevil wars - my site's name is still on all the pages, even though he is slowly changing everything to his name medevil rpg. I have already emailed the hosting company which host's medevilrpg.com Please can you give me some advice on how to take legal action and sue Kosta Hanna and get medevilrpg.com taken down. Regards, James Hakim
first of all, you did right tio emailed the hosting company(you better call them, it's faster) then you must talk to the police(internet one or smth like this) tell them all the details you could be taken to a process, so, prepare a lawyer
Issue a DMCA complaint with his host. It will be down in 24 hours. Then email him asking him to refund you the price of the fax.
My host for medevilwars.com is issuing a DMCA complaint to his host so the site can be taken down, what legal action can I take to sue him?
Your host is issuing the complaint? The complaint must be issued by the copyright holder. I am not a lawyer, but I don't think suing him would be worth your while.
Some people don't realize just how serious this actually is. I'd say he or she was VERY young and did not fully understand the potential consequences of his/her actions. Lets hope this is a lesson to him/her.
thank you everyone, I contacted my copyright lawyer and he told me what I should do, my lawyer was very helpful and im so glad im copyrighted the site when it launched back in october! Do you think I should trademark the name MedEvil Wars?
Doesn't hurt to do that. But ask your lawyer (if s/he's familiar with trademark law) what are its limits so you don't develop unrealistic expectations.
You said the hacker changed the PayPal info on your site...do you know how much money you lost? You obviously want that back to, with damages, but I'm sure your lawyer already told you that. It looks like a happy ending, but WOW, what a horrible thing to have happen and to go through! Sincerely, Larry MrUnloadingzone
wow man just...wow lol u didnt sue!? i know a guy that got his site hacked the person just deleted all the posts on the forum and he had a db backup but he sued the guy for $12,000 anyways lol
It's good that you got the site taken down. I don't think it is worth suing the hacker though - even if you can have your litigation expenses reimbursed, you will be wasting a lot of your own time.