March 12, 2005 ABS Forums crash
From Interdex, the community-edited guide to the local internet.
The March 12, 2005 ABS Forums crash occurred when the server hosting the forums lost all data due to a security breach. The forums were reinstalled, and AB's only backup was three months old, so he decided to start over from nothing. All users had to reregister, and by the next day, AB had recreated some of the forums and reinstated some of the moderators. Unfortunately, there was no longer a trash can, and supermods couldn't access the admin panel. This left Cubehead and rmuser to manage the half-functional forums until AB returned and restored admin access.
Over the next two hours, the forums were taken offline while the sections, groups and permissions were rebuilt. The chief concern among users was whether they would keep their former postcounts, but as this information was lost, there was no choice but for everyone to start at 0. Custom titles were granted on request. The perpetrator(s) of the attack has never been found.
Due to their close proximity, this event is often confused with the April 2, 2005 ABS Forums takeover, which was a separate and far less destructive event.