Greetings ChatSpike!

It is February 3rd. You were chatting along happily with your friends. Suddenly, you were disconnected. "What happened?" You wonder.

February 4th. You wake up to happily greet ChatSpike when you remember the server shutdown from the day before. Frantically, you booted your computer and tried to connect to ChatSpike. Unfortunately, still offline.

... Okay, maybe this might not be exactly what you did; however, the downtime explanation:

The downtime in question was caused due to a flaw in a separate piece of software that runs the same server as ChatSpike's IRC server.

The bug in our mail server software, Exim, allowed a spam script to abuse ChatSpike's mailserver to send spam e-mails off into the Internet. How sad that spam is actually a big, profitable business. Fortunately, we are able to report that all ChatSpike-related data is secure and un-touched; ChatSpike services were taken offline solely as a result of stopping the script from running and spreading.

As a result of this intrusion, we have taken precautions to prevent future exploits as well as improve ChatSpike's stability and reliability to better serve you, the users that make ChatSpike.

We deeply apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused; we know you need your daily dose of ChatSpike and we are still here, alive, and ready to give you your fix!

• SnoFox