chinese – DarylCagle.com

Chinese Hackers! Ouch!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date February 3, 2019

On Thursday night, last week, we suffered an unusually effective series of attacks from Chinese hackers against our database server that have brought our database and our CagleCartoons.com download site down, along with our PoliticalCartoons.com store site.

Chinese hackers, looking over my shoulder.

On Friday, my valiant editors Brian and Stacey Fairrington, answered over 250 calls and emails from editors to give them the new, emergency, interim Google Drive cartoon download location where we set up a temporary download site for the recent cartoons. Our new columns are available on Cagle.com, see them on the front page at the right. (If you’re a client who needs access to the interim Google Drive site to download the recent cartoons, email [email protected] and we’ll give you the link.)

Our cartoonists should email new cartoons to us at [email protected], which goes to all of us; we will manually add your cartoons to the Google Drive interim download site and we will be sending new cartoons out to the editors who take email delivery through MailChimp until we have a new CagleCartoons.com back up with a new database and server. We’re updating Cagle.com manually for now, so it may be slow to display new cartoons. Payments to the cartoonists who get paid quarterly went out a couple of weeks ago, and the royalty checks for the monthly cartoonists went out this weekend, for January. Don’t worry, the cartoonists have all been paid!

The Chinese hackers, who leave lots of Chinese language files and malware on our database server every time they break in, have been watching as we repair the server and they come back each time repairs are made to tear the server down again. We’ve tried but we can’t keep them out of our outdated system. The hackers win this round. We had to give up on the old server and we’re scrambling to re-write our management system to work with a current SQL server.

Regular readers know how we’ve had continuing problems with hackers attacking Cagle.com, mostly with DDos/denial of service attacks. Thanks to the generosity of Cloudflare, we’re fending off the DDos attacks. The current problem is that we were using an older database and server for our CagleCartoons.com syndicate site and PoliticalCartoons.com store site, which left us vulnerable. We were too complacent, since the attacks were all against Cagle.com in the past. Our old database system worked so well that I hated the prospect of the cost and hassle of recreating it with newer, more defensible code. I procrastinated too long.

We don’t keep confidential information online. No credit card information was stolen.

The editors have all been lovely about this and we haven’t gotten any complaints – at least not so far. It has been nice to see the support and goodwill from our subscription clients at a time when they could justifiably be grouchy.

I also appreciate the heroic efforts of our staff, Theo, Brian, Stacey and Rob, who have really stepped up this weekend to make things work through our database crisis.

I hate inconveniencing everyone. Thanks for your patience with this mess! We hope to have new versions of the CagleCartoons.com and PoliticalCartoons.com sites up soon.

Perhaps I’ve been drawing too many cartoons of Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh.

Tags cagle.com, caglecartoons.com, China, chinese, database, Dragon, hackers, political cartoons, politicalcartoons.com, xi jinping

Blog Syndicate

TRUE Crazy Stuff 3!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date August 5, 2018

Most of this new batch of my old TRUE panels came from my collection about entertainment and celebrities. I ended up killing most of these cartoons because they were so stale. I forget how different things were back in 1995. This edited batch of cartoons makes 1995 seem not so different from today – even though one cartoons shows a guy reading a book on the toilet; we may not read books anymore, but toilets haven’t changed much.

Star Trek is still familiar 23 years later. Mattel’s Barbie is still popular, but other toys in my TRUE cartoons are forgotten – for example Barney the Dinosaur was big in 1995. I forgot all about Barney. The first cartoon below is about Lassie, who we remembered as a doggie celebrity back in 1995. Do people remember Lassie now?

Tags 3 stooges, actor, afterlife, angels, animals, animated characters, army officer, astronaut, awful, bad.bitter, ballet dancer, bar, BARBIE, bartender, Bathroom, beer, bite, blow drier, bomb, book, bowler, Britain, broken bones, bungee running, cabinet, Captain Kirk, celebrity, cereal, Charlie the Tuna, children, China, chinese, class, clothes, cocktail, coffee, coffeemaker, commercial, computer, costume, courts, cowboy, cross dressing, curious, Curly, death, desert, Devil Emperor True Lies, Devil King of Children, die, ding, dinner, direct, doctor, dog, dog lovers, dolls, drawers, dry, dying, eat, education, Entertainment, Excitement 1995, executive assistant, fans, figure skater, flight attendant, food, guests, halos, hat, health, heaven, hell, hero, hosts, humans, ignorance, injured, injuries, injury, justice, Kelloggs Frosted Flakes, Ken, kids, Klingon, Larry, Lassie, lifesaving, line, mallett, manners, marine, Math Class is Tough, MATTEL, media, medicine cabinet, moe, movie, Movies, name, newspaper, nosey, office, outfit, parents, patron, percolate, personal computer, pets, pie, pilot, pint, polite, potential mates, presidential candidate, production company, pub, queue, re-runs, reruns, save life, school, scotus, search, Shemp, sicophants, sippies, sleep, snoop, soda jerk, space aliens, spit, spitoon, splley, spy, Star Trek, Starkist, stretch, swallow, tactful, taste, teacher, technology, Teen Talk Barbie, teeth, telepathy, television, tether, The Shawshank Redemption, the Supreme Court of the United States, the three stooges, thirst, toilet, toiletries, Tony the Tiger, toys, true, True Lies, tv, tv series, uk, unbrella, Under siege, united kingdom, violence, Vulcan, westerners, Willian Shatner, Worf, yuck

Blog Syndicate

TRUE Crazy Stuff!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date August 2, 2018

Here’s a batch of some crazy TRUE stuff from my factual cartoon panel from the 1990’s that never gets old!

Tags 1995 Beijing Women's conference, adult, aerosol cheese, Afro-American, Americans, ant abdomens, anteater, area 51, astrologers, astrology, astronaut, astronomer, astronomy, bacon, beer, beliefs, black, blackout, body art, Bogota, Buster, california, call, calves, can, cartoon, cartoonist, Cartoons, chewing tobacco, children, chinese, claim, columbia, conservative, conservatives, corn chips, cosmonaut, cost, country music, courts, current, Death penalty, deer, devil, die, ditto head, Draw, drawing, drink, earthquake, elderly, electricity, elk, Elvis Presley, ESP Extra Sensory Perception, favorite foods, frankfurters, fry, full body tattoo, ghost, Griffith Observatory, Gruel, guns, ham, health, Hostess Twinkies, hours, howdy pard.cowboy hat, hunting, idaho, income, insect, internal organs, kids, kilowatt hours, lesbians, Los Angeles, lottery ticket, medical, Michael Cagle, money, mosquito, movie, moviegoer, name, ninety bottles of beer, Northridge, nra, officials, old lady, poll, popcorn, professional wrestling, race, repellent, rich, rural, satan, sausage, security guards, shrank, sky, Skylab, soda, space, spirits, spit, spitoon, stars, taller, telescope.kids, television, trends, tribune media services, true, tv, UFO, Unidentified Flying Object, Venus, Vermont, waists, watching tv

Blog Syndicate

TRUE Kids 3!

Post author By Daryl Cagle
Post date July 31, 2018

Here’s another collection of my TRUE cartoons about kids!

I’m loading my oldies into our PoliticalCartoons.com database, and making some editorial decisions on what to edit or cut. These TRUE cartoons ran in newspapers back in 1995. It is interesting to see how many of them hold up well over the years. Things don’t change much. The TRUE cartoons that look stale have land-line phones, phone booths, and old style televisions. I’m culling out the cartoons that refer to events and politicians in 1995 – after all, our database is an online store and I don’t think people will be interested in licensing stale cartoons. Political cartoons in general go stale fast, which is both a problem and a blessing for us.