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Has you forum ever been hacked?

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Shawn Gossman

Shawn Gossman

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Has your forum ever been the victim of intrusive hacking?

How bad was it hacked? Did you lose access to it?

Do you know what caused the vulnerability that led to the intrusion?

How did you overcome it?
 
In the early 00s, the forum would be targeted and hacked every other week. The security isn't what it is now and it was fairly simple tbh. We lost a lot of members because of it.
 
Elseb said:
In the early 00s, the forum would be targeted and hacked every other week. The security isn't what it is now and it was fairly simple tbh. We lost a lot of members because of it.
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I wonder if they put backdoors in that kept getting intruded upon!
 
Shawn Gossman said:
I wonder if they put backdoors in that kept getting intruded upon!
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When it was being hacked, I wasn't an admin so I don't know what was happening but it happened so regularly that something strange was going on. Thank god those days are gone!
 
Back in 2006, I had a forum reviews forum on InvisionFree. We had some success and a former member who was banned cracked my password and deleted all members, posts and forums. That was horrible.

Same thing happened again by someone else this time in 2008. Same Reviews board, also InvisionFree. Cracked a staff members’ password and deleted all posts. We had around 100.000 posts at that time.

Since then never occurred, let’s hope it stays that way. 😅
 
aerodynamic said:
Back in 2006, I had a forum reviews forum on InvisionFree. We had some success and a former member who was banned cracked my password and deleted all members, posts and forums. That was horrible.

Same thing happened again by someone else this time in 2008. Same Reviews board, also InvisionFree. Cracked a staff members’ password and deleted all posts. We had around 100.000 posts at that time.

Since then never occurred, let’s hope it stays that way. 😅
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That would be so horrible!

I guess 2-step verification being enabled can help control that.

Is that something you use now?

Have you taken extra precautions on how to handle security?
 
I had a forum I launched for fun on phpbb2, went to sleep and woke up to a forum full of Russian posts. They took over the board and made it their own. I wasn't even demoted.

That was such a weird "hack".
 
capnsquarepants said:
I had a forum I launched for fun on phpbb2, went to sleep and woke up to a forum full of Russian posts. They took over the board and made it their own. I wasn't even demoted.

That was such a weird "hack".
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That is weird.

I think all my forums that were hacked with PhpBB2 and it was because I added a manual addon wrong.

Most of the time, stuff was defaced.

I used to also get hacked when I used Turnkey scripts. I would get clones of Twitter and MySpace and stuff like that and those were always full of security holes.
 
aerodynamic said:
Back in 2006, I had a forum reviews forum on InvisionFree. We had some success and a former member who was banned cracked my password and deleted all members, posts and forums. That was horrible.

Same thing happened again by someone else this time in 2008. Same Reviews board, also InvisionFree. Cracked a staff members’ password and deleted all posts. We had around 100.000 posts at that time.

Since then never occurred, let’s hope it stays that way. 😅
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What was the member originally banned for? Seems awfully petty for them to do that.
 
Elseb said:
What was the member originally banned for? Seems awfully petty for them to do that
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I honestly don’t remember the reasoning behind it. He even admitted it publicly on the cracked forum. As for the second time, no one admitted it but we had a feeling who did it, but couldn’t proof it. It was a time where we didn’t have access to databases and restores were not possible so it ended both cases dramatically.
 
aerodynamic said:
I honestly don’t remember the reasoning behind it. He even admitted it publicly on the cracked forum. As for the second time, no one admitted it but we had a feeling who did it, but couldn’t proof it. It was a time where we didn’t have access to databases and restores were not possible so it ended both cases dramatically.
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That would have been heartbreaking, especially when so much work had been put into your forum.
 
Elseb said:
That would have been heartbreaking, especially when so much work had been put into your forum.
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It would be. I agree.

But I reckon it's a good learning experience. It reminds us to treat security differently and to back things up.
 
My forum was hacked back when it was on MyBB several years ago. Part of the reason I switched to XenForo. No damage was done and only a few hours worth of data loss because I had a backup from the night before.
 
Nebulous said:
My forum was hacked back when it was on MyBB several years ago. Part of the reason I switched to XenForo. No damage was done and only a few hours worth of data loss because I had a backup from the night before.
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Was it before or after MyBB hire the outside party to rate their security?

I remember when MyBB announced that. I thought for sure that their software would be one of the safest after doing something like that.
 
Shawn Gossman said:
Was it before or after MyBB hire the outside party to rate their security?

I remember when MyBB announced that. I thought for sure that their software would be one of the safest after doing something like that.
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I don't remember that so it was probably before. The hackers pretty much just went down the list of all the forums listed in their forum showcase section hacking each one, which oddly made me feel a little better because at least the attack wasn't personal. They were just going after as many targets as possible. I believe MyBB patched the hole the hackers discovered but I still didn't feel safe anymore on their platform so I converted my forum to XF.
 
Nebulous said:
I don't remember that so it was probably before. The hackers pretty much just went down the list of all the forums listed in their forum showcase section hacking each one, which oddly made me feel a little better because at least the attack wasn't personal. They were just going after as many targets as possible. I believe MyBB patched the hole the hackers discovered but I still didn't feel safe anymore on their platform so I converted my forum to XF.
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I think I might had been a victim of that hack.

Back then I probably would had several forums running.

At one time, I ran way too many.

I think they all got hacked.
 
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