Hackers posted profanity

[Rob Beckers]

As some of you that regularly visit these forums no doubt noted there recently was a post, under my name, with profanity in it. It seems some joker in Turkey found a hole in the forum software, and choose to post this, pretending for it to come from my account. Apologies to those that read it. I've fixed the mechanism that was used to post the bogus message.

Unfortunately there are likely many security holes in the vBulletin software, especially since we are running a somewhat older version (this because upgrading in vBulletin is a tedious, and largely manual process, taking many hours for this forum due to the modifications to the stock software). With a rather busy business to run, I'm not really looking forward to spending many hours to 'harden' the software, with no guarantee since even newer versions likely have holes.

For the time being I'll make some changes that should make it a little harder for hackers. We'll see if that does the trick. If anyone with lots of PHP/MySQL/vBulletin experience has any suggestions, please contact me. I'm definitely open to suggestions!

-RoB-

[Dale Sheler]

Don't worry Rob, we know you only break out the profanity when you are really, really, really mad. Like hitting your thumb with a hammer, or dropping a panel off a roof.:D

[Rob Beckers]

Thanks Dale!
Yeah, not my style (at least not in public) :rolleyes:

I had hardened the underlying software a bit (the forum runs on top of PHP), and someone pointed out that 'captcha', the little images that help verify there's a human at the keyboard, were no longer working. Just fixed that, so hopefully it's all working as usual again. Please let me know if you find anything more out-of-order.

-RoB-

[Russ Bailey]

As some of you that regularly visit these forums no doubt noted there recently was a post, under my name, with profanity in it. It seems some joker in Turkey found a hole in the forum software, and choose to post this,

Not me!

I guess there are lowlife types everywhere.

[Rob Beckers]

Now that you mention it Russ, it looked a lot like your posts... :weird::weird:

Actually all-in-all we're pretty lucky. There's the occasional spam on this forum, but not nearly as much as some other forums have to deal with. If we could get people to post useful and interesting stuff that would help. Real posts have been dropping off lately.

-RoB-

[Robert Mann]

They have dropped off on a lot of forums that I use.
Bob Mann

[Rob Beckers]

People must just be busy building renewable energy related stuff, instead of writing about it. I know I am, now I know why the word 'busy' is part of 'business'...

-RoB-