Moving On...

It seems I'm not the only one with a little drama. I pulled this article from suprnova.

"Methlabs was founded in the year 1997 and in these many years we have got to know them mostly by their release of PeerGuardian, who is mostly used by users to block anti-piracy organisations and other addresses that may hurt regular users.

Most members of the PeerGuardian team have been forced to leave their website and servers. One of the so called 'trusted' members who was responsible of taking care for finances has with time, slowly taken over the MethLabs website and servers. This member has also taken over all of the donations, that were given to the development team by the users of PeerGuardian.

Methlabs says they will continue development of the PeerGuardian2 at a different temporary location and that they are currently searching for a new permament home, but until they find it you can access their website at PeerGuardian.SF.net.


We have talked with Joseph Farthing who is one of the admins of Methlabs and he has told us that the person who stole their servers and money was using the nick "cerberius" and that he has been on Methlabs team for a bit over a year.

Also fake news has appeared on internet saying, that everything Joseph Farthing and others are saying are lies and are trying to confuse people. The fake news can be found at Methlabs.org. You can also see a reply from Joseph Farthing at p2pnet.net.

Methlabs advises users to not update their blocklist, since this part of Methlabs that was hosting the blocklist has been taken over too. PeerGuardian users are advised to update their blocklists from a temporary link, until their lists return.

Once they are settled on the new location, they will update PeerGuardian with the new lists and redirect everything to the new domain. Users are advised to not trust anything they see from domains MethLabs.org & BlockList.org.

For now we can only hope no users will be harmed from this unfortunate event and we wish Methlabs all the best luck with setting their new site up.

We will cover the story as it evolves and keep you informed."

Remember, if you're using PeerGuardian, make sure you turn off auto updates. And if anyone knows how to manually update the lists, please let me know. :)

EDIT: I found out an easy way to update the blocklists. Get yourself some Blocklist Manager.

EDIT: Taken from slyck.com
September 27, 2005
Thomas Mennecke


Two weeks ago, Slyck reported on the apparent hijacking of the Methlabs.org and associated domain names. According to the SOS press release, a “majority of the Methlabs.org administration and development team have been forced out of their website.”

In addition, the assets of the site, including the Blocklist.org source code and Methlabs.org’s financial donations, were also taken over.

According to Methlabs.org, founded by Tim Leonard and Ken McKelland, an individual named “Cerberius” slowly took control of the site. Slyck contacted Cerberius and received his explanation of how events unfolded.

“D3f (co-founder of Methlabs.org) told me to renew it. I did, and in doing so, it was transferred to my account. D3f said this exactly, “Just checking in guys been working non stop but something needs to be taken care of Blocklist.org has expired and register fly no longer excepts paypal, so someone is gonna have to try and renew it.”

According to Cerberius, there was a revolt on Methlab.org several months after he renewed the domains.

“The other individuals wiped the server of all data. I came online that day and found things had been taken over, etc. There was a revolt, and I was threatened to turn over the domain. Needless to say, I knew nothing of this and was angry”

But this didn’t add up to now restored owner, Tim Leonard. Leonard told Slyck.com that Cerberius was only authorized to renew the domains, not take ownership of the site. After he took control of the site, he was then able to seize the site’s assets.

Over the course of several weeks prior to the hijacking, tensions built within the Methlabs.org community. According to moderators, Cerberius’s philosophy was becoming increasingly incompatible with that of Methlabs. Because of this incompatibility, the administration was moving to remove him from power. The situation came to a head, and the knowledge entrusted to Cerberius was then used against Methlabs to hijack the site.

In the end, Cerberius came to realize this simply was not a fight worth fighting, and agreed to transfer the domains and assets back to Tim Leonard. The transfers took place approximately 1 hour prior to the publication of this article, which has been verified by Tim Leonard and by conducting a “WhoIs” query in GoDaddy.com.