"Account Suspended"

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #1 03-11-08, 03:56

Could any of you please tell me when this error message first appeared? I believe it was on or about last Tuesday.

The reason I ask is I suspect we're under attack by someone who's slipped a trojan into our system at some level. I am the ONLY one who has access to the overall control system which could do this thing... albeit effective this evening our passwords have been changed... methinks someone is pissed I wouldn't let them in to spam us. They've been shutting us down every two hours today...........

In any case, I'm working to debug our systems right now, and in the meantime I need to track our more recent membership applicants. If you have any info, please forward ASAP please. One way or another I'm going to beat this shit!!!

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #2 03-11-08, 13:50

FOLLOWUP:

It seems whatever's gotten in here is now striking at 15 past the hour, each hour, leading me to suspect it's a buried script somewhere. I'm still working on finding and isolating the little sumbitch, so far without luck.

I'll keep you posted, but in the meantime, just mind 15 past each hour!

G.

Brian Gough · #3 03-11-08, 14:21

Geoff,

Until the last couple of months I have never had a major problem accessing the MLU Forum from either of my locations. Recently it has been bad, but yesterday was the worst, with various "account suspended" and "cancelled" notices showing up at all 4 of the log in points.

Good luck in tracking down the problem.

Brian

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #4 03-11-08, 16:27

Thanks Brian.... this is a nasty one. I've filed tickets with both the hosting service people and the software providers, and I hope one or another can help. Methinks it's a trojan which has been written to deliberately take down this domain to "punish" us for...??? I don't know but it has my full attention.

I do know that this evening (EST) I will be taking the whole thing down to upgrade regardless... I'll give everyone as much notice as possible. I'm just sorry for this 15 minutes past the hour thing - I know it's frustrating!

Alex Blair (RIP) · #5 03-11-08, 16:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geoff Winnington-Ball

Thanks Brian.... this is a nasty one. I've filed tickets with both the hosting service people and the software providers, and I hope one or another can help. Methinks it's a trojan which has been written to deliberately take down this domain to "punish" us for...??? I don't know but it has my full attention.

I do know that this evening (EST) I will be taking the whole thing down to upgrade regardless... I'll give everyone as much notice as possible. I'm just sorry for this 15 minutes past the hour thing - I know it's frustrating!

Jif
I just noticed it yesterday...I'm in here a couple of times a day...
I think it's the damned COMMIES...
Have a Ripple or two and get them rotten suckers..Too bad you couldn't do a reverse program that would go to the sourse and give them a good dose of the clap..!!
That would smart..
Keep up the great effort..This will get you a MID for sure..
Brother Al

cliff · #6 03-11-08, 19:17

happened here local Queensland time of about 5am yesterday November 3 and it is only this morning 4:15 am that I have gained access again.

Keith Webb · #7 03-11-08, 20:09

How dare they meddle with our forum.

I've send an email to many of the Australian members to let them know what's happening when the forum is down.

Best of luck in finding it Jif.

Alex Blair (RIP) · #8 03-11-08, 20:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geoff Winnington-Ball

Thanks Brian.... this is a nasty one. I've filed tickets with both the hosting service people and the software providers, and I hope one or another can help. Methinks it's a trojan which has been written to deliberately take down this domain to "punish" us for...??? I don't know but it has my full attention.

I do know that this evening (EST) I will be taking the whole thing down to upgrade regardless... I'll give everyone as much notice as possible. I'm just sorry for this 15 minutes past the hour thing - I know it's frustrating!

Jif
I just noticed it yesterday...I'm in here a couple of times a day...
I think it's the damned COMMIES...
Have a Ripple or two and get them rotten suckers..Too bad you couldn't do a reverse program that would go to the source and give them a good dose of the clap..!!
That would smart..
Keep up the great effort..This will get you a MID for sure..
Brother Al

Ryan · #9 04-11-08, 07:00

The best of luck Jif to you and the others trying to tackle this attack.
Thanks to Keefy for the "heads up" via email.

One thing I did notice was that I got " account suspended" notification and " contact the webmaster/ provider @ class-five.com. But this was when I tried to log in via: www.mapleleafup.org/forums.
Is that strange or normal?

All the best again.

aj.lec · #10 04-11-08, 07:07

Best of luck with it Jif
bring back capital punishment

some "people" really are a waste of oxygen
That message came up when i went to log in on Saturday night (7pm Australian time) ,sunday and again this morning

matilda IIA · #11 04-11-08, 12:59

Hi Guys

I have the same details as Ryan....

How very frustrating.

Kind regards
Matt

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #12 04-11-08, 13:24

1. OK, it looks like the problem is partially solved anyway. Someone had either dumped or hijacked an old phpBB script on the server to send out vast amounts of spam, which was locking up the processor and causing us to be automatically suspended. I believe that's been dealt with.

2. Regardless of the above, we're still under assault which is why it's functioning so slowly right now. I'm still looking into that.

3. This evening (EST) I will be taking down the Forum for a couple of hours in order to upgrade from 3.6.8 to 3.7.3. This will NOT be a repeat of the fiasco last time!! However, be advised we WILL see downtime because of it. The software provider advises that this may well cut out the spammers almost completely as well as fix the database error problems. We shall see.

4. Don't worry about the class-five.com thingy. That belongs to me as well and is the shadow domain which holds all of the virtual sites which I host. My contact details remain the same.

5. More to follow as it develops. Thanks for your understanding!

Jif

Les Freathy · #13 04-11-08, 18:00

Well done Jif i had been having a few problems in the main telling me the site was unavailable, Now i can supply the wall and part of the fireing squad who has the guns and bullets i thing double barrel would be best to make sure we get rid of the b------s
cherrs
Les

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #14 05-11-08, 22:27

WITHIN THE HOUR, I am going to take down this forum and upgrade as indicated before. We've been hit harder than ever since late yesterday afternoon, and the hosting folks can't figure it out. Hopefully the new iteration will help. I will do my best to keep you informed, but in the meantime, use my email address of sunrayniner -at- sympatico.ca for info. One way or another we'll get through this.

Wish me luck. This has been a bad one.

G.

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #15 07-11-08, 21:52

Back in business after two days down. For now. I'm not gonna count my chickens but it looks good. I'll keep ya posted.....

David_Hayward (RIP) · #16 07-11-08, 22:22

Well done mate!

Keith Webb · #17 07-11-08, 22:31

Nice to see Maple Leaf UP again.

Phil Waterman · #18 07-11-08, 22:42

Hi Geoff

I've been going through with-drawl from not having my daily fix of CMP talk.

Thank you again for all the effort into trying to fix the problem. We all hope that this will take care of this type of a problem for the next few years.

Cheers Phil

aj.lec · #19 07-11-08, 22:54

congratulations Geoff

speed seems good too
thanks for all your work

hrpearce · #20 07-11-08, 23:11

Thanks for the effort Geoff it was hard having to do my own thinking

Justin Pollard · #21 08-11-08, 01:28

Well Done,I havnt been able to get in for a few days,but all good now.

Justin.

Stewart Loy · #22 08-11-08, 01:42

Jif,

Thanks for all of your efforts to get back online.

What can the ordinary MLUer do to help?

Stewart

lynx42 · #23 08-11-08, 08:13

Well done Jif.
I was starting to worry about the future of MLU.
The with-drawl symptoms were starting to kick in.
Glad your on top of it again.
Regards Rick

Ken Hughes · #24 08-11-08, 08:47

Phew iwas getting withdrawl symtims,well done Jiff

Hanno Spoelstra · #25 08-11-08, 11:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geoff Winnington-Ball

Wish me luck. This has been a bad one.

Today's equivalent of Vimy's Ridge, eh?

Thanks for standing up and fight!

H.

Paul Singleton · #26 08-11-08, 16:18

Yes Geoff, thanks for keeping the site going. To bad that you couldn't send this plague back to the one that infected us!

Paul

CWO (ret) Gilles Aubé · #27 10-11-08, 04:34

Well done Geoff, it is good to be back on the best FORUM.

Phil Waterman · #28 12-11-08, 23:20

Hi All

Is any body having trouble with the thumbnail pictures incorporated in posting not the links but actually seeing the small pictures at the bottom of messages. I am not on all messages is this happening and it seems to be a mix of older messages and new.

Cheers Phil

Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP) · #29 13-11-08, 01:27

It seems to be most of the older thumbnails.... it may just be pixilation of those, but I'll have to take down the forum to test this. At least the links work. Methinks I'll work on this come Saturday morning unless something else crashes. There's also a new iteration of the forum I may upload at the same time.

In the interim, I HAVE run a program to identify the "corrupted" photos, most of which go back years; methinks I'll delete them at the same time and see if that helps. There aren't that many considering we have over 20,000 images online...

Thanks for bringing this up.

G.

Jordan Baker · #30 13-11-08, 03:19

Thanks for all the hard work you have done Geoff and anyone else working behind the scenes to get MLU back up and running.

Would it help with the photos if we started having them hosted off site on photobucket or something similar?