“Brass” in this context means “leadership.” See: https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/top+brass

It is not a snapshot of then when the issue happened, but I would equate it to https://www.apple.com/leadership/

Not a new product. I was inclined for a moment to think it was ("We will now introduce the all-new Apple Brass!")

Avoiding lightweight markup languages and sticking to real programming languages for configuration has a lot of benefits.

On that: https://youtu.be/0pX7-AG52BU

Nice to see a fellow Maroon on here!

I assumed that this meant the attackers logged into their own social network accounts while they were "inside" (i.e. using) compromised machines in the target locations.

That makes sense, thanks. I didn't think they would be silly enough to do that.

Another potential option is using a Linode 512 with "extra" RAM (see the Extras tab in the Linode Manager).

Additionally, I've always found the Linode support folks to be fairly accommodating, so maybe it's worth asking if they can still provision 768s.

Yea, some people suggested that in the forums. It doesn't end up being the full 768 (which is not the end of the world) but you also lose the extra HDD and bandwidth so you're actually paying more at that point.