UnknownAX Disaster

The UnknownAX disaster (also known as the AX disaster, MelUAX or The Clam mistake) was an infamous event that occurred on May 8, 2009 involving the member UnknownAX, who gained access to Melanie's Platform Racing 2 and Jiggmin's Village admin accounts."STAY OFF PR2". Kongregate. May 8, 2009. 
Although several moderator accounts have been compromised following it, this remains the only case that involved an administrator.
==Background==
UnknownAX was already well-known months prior to the incident after he discovered an exploit in PR2 that allowed him to reach rank 60."JV Historical Reference Guide". Acid Forums. August 2015. This was nearly double that of any other member at the time, not being reached legitimately until 2010 by Quesin or surpassed until 2013. He reported the vulnerability to Jiggmin, who allowed him to keep the rank as a reward.
2 days before the disaster UnknownAX released a PR2 hacked client called "The Clam" on his website. Although it was removed 12 hours later, around 60 players logged in with it, including a few moderators. Unwittingly to the user, the client illegally came bundled with a keylogger, which gave him the passwords to every account that used it.
==Incident==
On May 8th, UnknownAX posted a blog on JV titled "4:00PM PST Isabel", simply saying "Be there.""4:00PM PST Isabel". Jiggmin's Village. May 8, 2009.
 
While how many people showed up is unknown, it's been described as a lot. UnknownAX wrote "brb" in the chat and logged off. He then signed into Melanie's account and joined Derron, PR2's most popular server.
UnknownAX immediately began promoting hundreds of players to permanent mods, quickly erupting into chaos as few took their new status seriously. Many started issuing eternity bans to random members, a now discontinued option equivalent to 4.6 years. The official mods and other admins were unable to stop UnknownAX as neither group can ban admins. Admins could ban moderators however, allowing him to ban the legitimate ones to maximize disarray. He soon gave out eternity bans himself, using reasons like having a "retarded nickname", "tiny dick" and "brick for a brain" among others."Platform Racing 2 works now XD". Kongregate. May 8, 2009."Banned on Platform Racing 2 need help.?". Yahoo! Answers. May 8, 2009."Melanie got hacked!!!!". blahzone.wordpress.com. May 8, 2009.
As Melanie used the same password for her JV account, UnknownAX was able to access it as well. He started by spamming threads with swears before putting porn as Melanie's avatar and posting it everywhere on her profile. Similarly to an incident earlier that year, he then prunned every non-stickied discussion on the forum, making them unrecoverable. Several members were also given over 4 million thanks, which caused their counts to roll over to zero.
Roughly 4 hours after the event began, Jiggmin logged on and banned Melanie's accounts.
==Aftermath==
As there was no quick way to revert a majority of the damage, PR2 shutdown for 2 days while Jiggmin manually removed bans and demodded members."All the servers are down!". YouTube. May 9, 2009."PR2 servers down". Kongregate. May 9, 2009. Jiggmin made no public comment on the incident. Instead he posted a positive blog that night about the community achieving a Folding@home milestone where over 1,000 players had folded enough points for a prize."F@H". Jiggmin. May 8, 2009.
UnknownAX received an eternity ban from Jiggmin while the servers were down."Jiggmin was online and banned UnknownAX!". YouTube. May 9, 2009.
As seen in his profile pic above though, he was able to circumvent it."UnKnownAX IS BACK!". Jiggmin's Village. December 19, 2009."UnknownAX.". Kongregate. December 14, 2009. He was also given a permanent ban on the forum, which was later undone in 2011 for "The First Annual Leniency Day" when all banned accounts were unbanned."First Annual Leniency Day". Jiggmin's Village. June 20, 2011. Regardless, he mostly left PR2 following the event, but visited JV occasionally after he was unbanned. As for why he did it, an indirect quote from him explains his motivation: 
"I did it to teach you guys a lesson. Nothing is unhackable, not even PR2. And mods and admins should never go on that kind of thing. If mods are irresponsible, things like this can and will happen."
2 safeguards were implemented as a result of the disaster. One lets each admin only promote 1 account to a full moderator every 24 hours, while the other expanded the "demod" button to demote admins as well."Platform Racing 2's server: promote_to_moderator.php" - GitHub
An unknown number of levels are unpublished now from members abusing the mod tool. The most prominent ones include the original campaign maps, preventing them from appearing in searches. "Jail Break" by The Racer's removal notably prevented it from reappearing in All Time Best until 2018 despite later being republished.
Under her alt "melanie_01_girl", Melanie apologized and announced she would leave shortly after. While her main account was briefly demoted once it was unbanned, she soon returned to modding for the remainder of the year before officially retiring in 2010."PR2 and Jiggmin's Village lost an Administrator". Kongregate. March 31, 2010.
The event is widely viewed as the worst disaster in the community's history. Because of its scale and his previous rank exploit, UnknownAX became known as an infamous hacker in the community. Future incidents would often be incorrectly blamed on him at first or, in some occasions, have the perpetrator pretend to be him.
==References==
Category:Events
Category:Platform Racing 2 Articles
Category:Jiggmin's Village Articles