UPSB
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UPSB stands for the Universal Pen Spinning Board. It was the primary international Pen Spinning Community for the English language.
History
UPSB V1
Paradoxically, there was never a 'UPSB V1' forum, with the original Pentix forum often being mistakenly referred to as UPSB V1. To add even more confusion, when Kam first started working on UPSB on the 7th October 2003, the address directory was /UPSB2/. This was given to prevent people guessing the URL to the forum, and not an indicator of the forum's version number. After release, the /UPSB2/ directory was kept and never changed to /UPSB/, adding to the confusion.
UPSB V2
Opened to the public on the 11th January 2004. In 2005 a collaboration was held between PDS and UPSB with an edit from SuperHandz's De'vo named 'UPSB + Pendolsa Collaboration Video', split into two parts. The collaboration featured early spinners such as Zombo, nhk_9 and Tohlz. Important contributions were the Research Department, Naming Committee and the UPSB Wiki. The former two did not have much impact at the time, but the UPSB wiki had great impact as a reference for correct terminology to the general public. The wiki was edited and maintained by members of the Research Department and Naming Committee.
UPSB was originally going to be named simply "UB" but this was changed before the release of the site.
On the 16th October 2005 UPSB V2 closed without an official replacement. Lack of moderation and problems with the forum software were listed among the reasons for the closure of the site. This led to the creation of UCPSB in its wake, as the planned UPSB V3 was delayed with no updates.
UPSB V3
The development version of UPSB V3 was opened accidentally for public registration once and then closed for maintenance. Delays caused the new board's opening to be delayed for a couple of years.
UCPSB V3 merger
On June 11th, 2007, development started on UCPSB V3, aiming to fix issues like a non-functioning search engine to help the board's success. After discussions with Kam, UCPSB V3's name and structure was changed to fit the theme of the prototype UPSB V3. The original UPSB V3 site was closed and the UCPSB site was to adopt the role of UPSB V3 in its stead.
On the 8th September 2007, the opening of UPSB V3 was announced on the third UCPSB podcast by Zombo[1]. It opened two months later on the 14th October 2007, with UCPSB closing to allow people to migrate to UPSB V3.
Closure
On the 22nd June 2010 Zombo opened a thread announcing the closure of UPSB V3, citing unjustifiable increasing server costs as the reason for closing[2]. In the same thread, the opening of UPSB V4 was also announced.
UPSB V4
UPSB V4 opened a day after the closure of UPSB V3 on the 23rd June 2010.
SQL Injection Attack
By 2014 maintenance of the board had fallen into disarray, and the site was left vulnerable to several exploits that had not been patched by updating the VBulletin forum software. This led to the site being attacked by an SQL injection that allowed full access to the database of the site[3]. The attacker used this access to grant himself undeleteable admin access on an account and dump the database tables containing emails, passwords and other details about users. They then logged onto the account and started causing havoc, breaking user password hashes and posting the passwords of UPSB users into the shoutbox.
The administrator of the website at the time, Zkhan was not technically knowledgeable and was ill-equipped to handle the attack. Making no attempts to mitigate damage or protect user data, the attacker was allowed free roam of the site and database, compromising all user account data.
The attacker demonstrated some knowledge of the pen spinning community in the shoutbox, indicating that he was a spinner himself. The attacker also suggested the XenForo forum software, which was eventually used to create UPSB V5. Access to the site was not revoked from the attacker, and even after a rollback to 8th September on the 16th of September the exploit remained unfixed, meaning that the attack only stopped once the exploiter had become bored with his work. The vulnerable forum remained open until the opening of V5 in December.