15-Year-Old Developer Restores Social Network After Beget VPS Data Wipe in Cyber Attack
A 15-year-old developer has detailed how he restored his Russian social network Agora within roughly three hours after hosting provider Beget confirmed that a cyber attack had wiped his VPS, destroying all data and binary backups.
The platform, aimed at students, teachers, and pupils, runs on React + TypeScript + Vite for the frontend, self-hosted Supabase (Postgres 17) inside Docker, Bun services under PM2, and Caddy as a reverse proxy. Media files are stored in Yandex Object Storage, while the entire backend previously lived on a single Beget VPS.
On 1 November the developer set up offsite encrypted backups: pg_dump output was encrypted with GPG using a public key stored on the server and uploaded to Yandex S3. The last backup was taken at 03:00 UTC on 1 November. On 2 November the server stopped responding. On 3 November Beget confirmed the data loss and advised changing all keys.
The master encryption key for end-to-end encrypted private messages existed only in the server process environment and was not included in any backup. This rendered all private keys stored in the database unreadable. Recovery was possible only because an escrow key had been built into the encryption scheme in advance. A custom script running entirely on the developer’s local machine re-encrypted 1218 messages for 160 users using new key pairs, with zero errors.
Migration to a new VPS in Saint Petersburg was performed using scripts already prepared in the repository. All Supabase secrets had to be regenerated, breaking authentication for existing Expo / React Native Android builds. The developer solved this by configuring Caddy to transparently replace the old anon key in headers and query parameters.
Additional problems included lost VAPID push subscriptions, a monitoring runner that lived on the destroyed server, missing timeouts in health checks, and the need to recreate a hardened coturn TURN server with strict relay restrictions. The incident also exposed that the status page flag was checked together with a database query that could hang indefinitely.
In his conclusions the developer stressed that encryption keys and environment files must be placed in encrypted offsite backups, that every backup must be tested by actual restore, that monitoring and deployment runners must survive the main server, and that single-provider hosting remains a critical single point of failure even when the provider claims to maintain backups.
Related articles
Wireshark Wi-Fi Traffic Analysis: Diagnosing Connectivity Failures in 802.11 Networks
Wireshark captures help distinguish between radio-layer issues, DHCP failures, and application-layer problems when a device connects to Wi-Fi but cannot load pages. The guide explains how to select the right capture point—client, monitor-mode adapter, or wired side of the access point—and why ordinary Ethernet headers often hide critical 802.11 management and control frames. Detailed sections cover CSMA/CA contention, frame types (Management, Control, Data), EAPOL-Key exchanges for WPA2-Personal, and the limitations of retry flags as loss indicators. Practical Linux commands using iw, dumpcap, and NetworkManager demonstrate how to enable monitor mode on channel 6 HT20 and record a two-minute trace. Filters for wlan.addr, eapol, and wlan.fc.retry allow analysts to isolate association failures, key-handshake problems, or DHCP delays. The article also addresses decryption of WPA2 traffic with a known passphrase and warns that Wireshark cannot replace a spectrum analyzer for detecting non-Wi-Fi interference.
Developer Creates Personal Task Manager Allowing Claude Code and OpenCode Agents to Autonomously Execute Marked Tasks
A developer has built a personal task management system at shar8.app that integrates directly with AI coding agents including Claude Code, Codex CLI, and OpenCode through the Model Context Protocol. Tasks marked with an 'Agent' flag are automatically picked up by scheduled agent runs, executed locally on the user's machine, and results are written back into the task notes for human review. The system supports both browser-based OAuth authentication and persistent bearer tokens for headless cron or CLI usage, with strict separation between human-initiated and agent-initiated actions. Security measures include treating task text as untrusted data rather than instructions, disabling all tools by default, and requiring explicit allow-lists for any external actions such as web search. The implementation uses a custom MCP server exposing fifteen specific tools for listing, creating, editing, and delegating tasks, while a companion plugin for Claude Code handles scheduled execution via native system schedulers like launchd and systemd timers. The author emphasizes that agents never assign work to themselves and that final task closure always remains with the human user.
T-Bank Warns Customers of Payment and Transfer Outages
On November 3, T-Bank notified users that payments and transfers may fail due to ongoing technical issues. The bank placed an in-app message stating that the problems are being fixed. Clients confirmed the disruption through reports to Interfax, noting that the online banking interface displays the warning upon login. The outage affects only payments and transfers, while other banking services remain available. No details were provided regarding the root cause, the number of impacted users, or an estimated time for full recovery. Monitoring service DETECTOR404 also recorded the incident, aligning with user complaints and the bank's official notice.
Rostelecom Refactors InfoSec Careers: Matching Employee Skills to Evolving Business Priorities
Rostelecom's information security block developed a systematic approach to reassess employee expertise and redirect talent to new roles when business structures change rapidly. In one case, an architect hired for a specific team was reassigned after the unit was disbanded, initially moving to a similar position that did not fully align with his broader competencies. HR-business partner Olga Lapshina examined the specialist's full background, including prior work in audits, methodology development, regulatory documentation, university teaching, and scientific research, plus strong mentoring abilities with younger staff. These skills matched the needs of the methodology department, leading to a transfer supported by an individual development plan and a mentor via the internal Tochka Rosta platform. Within two months the employee contributed improvements that accelerated preliminary InfoSec audits by 30 percent and risk assessments by 20 percent while expanding threat scenario coverage by 10 percent. The initiative demonstrates Rostelecom's emphasis on horizontal career movement and retention of experienced professionals through structured career tracks.