Technic News

Hello folks,

As I'm sure most of you have noticed, Trending is not really trending at the moment. We've noticed the issue reported by our community moderators and have addressed the issue on our end. The situation will need some time, most likely a couple days to resolve fully, for Trending to catch back up. We apologize for the inconvenience. 

We have also be aware of how easily it is for user to "remake" packs to get them to show up as Trending again. We have some ideas on how to improve the algorithm backing our Trending code to make sure it doesn't favor new packs so heavily. Existing packs do have the ability to trend again and we don't want to overshadowed. Refreshing a pack should be as simple as updating an existing pack, not spamming the system with new packs, as this this is against the Modpack Terms.

Most of all, Happy New Year Crafters! We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2017!

Sincerely,

GenPage

Hi.

Yesterday an admin account was compromised within the Technic Platform software we use. Our servers, databases and other assorted 'very important' things were NOT compromised, only the internal software we use to administrate the Platform itself. 

The result of this was someone used the admin account to grant a brand-new account admin access, and then went around deleting packs and changing emails to accounts. Immediately this was noticed (you can’t just delete the most popular user-created modpack of all time) and the servers themselves were shut down by me. Thus, the 503 page everyone saw for the last 12+ hours. 

I want to be clear that our passwords are hashed and salted and can’t be accessed from the Platform software. An admin can change passwords but can’t see what the current passwords are.

The result of this now is that the last day or so has been erased from the Platform’s memory and it thinks it was around 24+ hours ago. Our security has been re-done and now we offer various features. The most important one would be 2-factor authentication. It’s available for any user in your profile page if you’d like to use it (and I’d suggest you do if you run any sort of business ventures with your modpack/servers). As far as another issue happening like this it should be very unlikely as admin accounts within our software can no longer admin other admins which prevents specifically what this attack did. 

As for why we were attacked? There is a lot of money that is moved around because of the Platform. While we at Technic don’t run servers or accept donations, server operators use the Platform to serve their customers. Because of this there is real value that can be targeted when it comes to modpacks, servers, rankings and the accounts attached to them.  

Thanks for all your guys’ patience with us as we dealt with this issue. We’ll be keeping an eye out as always for anything weird that happens and hopefully have prevented other attacks that use this avenue.   

-KakerMix  

Hi.

We've gone through yet another revision of the Technic Platform and the new design is live. This new look allows more modpacks on a single page vs. the old style list, and the new design works well on *mobile* browsers which is aces. We will be going through and fixing what things we've missed and tweaking as needed.
Thanks.

We wanted to write a brief news post to remind you that a few days ago we shut off the trending recalculation until we could make some improvements to keep it from hurting the site.  Well, last night at 4am US Eastern time, we ran the trending recalculation once again.  It took about 30 minutes and both the site and launcher API were completely acessible during that time.  Our launcher API and Platform uptime for the last 24 hours are both 100%.  We wanted to let you know that this is happening, not just to let you know that Trending packs are at 100% again, but also to point out one of the things we've been doing this month to fix the site's reliability.  We hope you enjoy the slightly more stable website!

As some may be aware, Java 8 does not play well with versions of forge after Minecraft 1.6 but before Forge 1230.  Since updating a pack to 1.7.10 can be a lot of work, some pack owners have ignored this issue for a little while now.  However, there has been a mod available for a little while called LegacyJavaFixer, which allows older versions of forge to work with Java 1.8 properly.  You can get it here.  Putting that mod into your pack will allow Java 8 users to play your pack.

Packs that are not compatible with Java 8 generate a lot of frustration for Platform users, they produce a lot of reports to clear for us, and we want them to update.  It's easier than ever now, just add the LegacyJavaFixer to  your pack, or update to Forge 1230.  Either of these will work.

For this reason, beginning on February 9, we will be treating packs that are not compatible with Java 8 as nonfunctioning.  That means that if we get a report from a Java 8 users saying that your pack doesn't work, your pack will be disabled until you address the issue.  During that time, users will see your pack as Offline in the launcher, your pack will not appear in search or the trending list.  If you're interested in getting your pack popular, being disabled can be very damaging.  That is why you need to address this issue before February 9.  If you have any questions about how to fix your pack, please ask here, or join us on reddit or IRC.