Important - Please Read

[Mike]

Hello everyone

Since last night a couple of members on another forum hosted by my web company have reported a problem with the forum software. In this instance the forums are viewable, however, Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 on Windows based computers are saying that your computer is under attack from 'localhost' and then a string of rubbish using a 'Malicious Toolkit Variant' (or similar along those lines). This seems to have been an issue from about 22:00 on 10 October 2008.

Please can you let me know below if you have received this message, as your computer may have downloaded a JS Downloader trojan virus. We have taken steps to prevent this from happening again, however, if you have that message then further steps will need to be taken to ensure that your computer is free from any infection.

If you are worried, check that your computer is fully up to date (XP Service Pack 3 etc) and using up to date Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3. Then run a virus scan using your normal anti virus protection system which will flag up (and fix!) any problems. If you need any help please let me know!

Thanks
Mike

PS Fully up-to-date computers and Mac's should not be troubled. However, best to check just in case!

[Mike]

In fact it was from 00:00 on 11 October 2008 someone seems to have broken into my web hosting and replaced all of the index.php and index.html files which may have been tampered with but have now been re-uploaded since.

[johnriley1uk]

The forum is still not displaying properly in IE7, but seems fine in ff3.

The johnriley1uk forum is Ok but the index page does not fully load in either IE7 or ff3. I know it's difficult for you to spot some of the glitches because you are using a Mac.

Have any forum members here been affected?

[Mike]

I will upload the index.php file again but I honestly don't know why it would be affected. The files have not been altered on the 11th according to the web server.

[Mike]

Hiya everyone

I have been busy and have totally deleted all the files on the web server and totally reset it to the factory default. This means we are now virus free (for sure) and you can all post with confidence again. I hope that none of your computers were infected with the nastyness. I hope to be able to cope with it much faster next time.

Let me know if you have any problems.
Thanks
Mike

[Mike]

We seem to be having some problems with the webhosting again today. I hope they will be resolved shortly. Sorry for the inconvenience. It is more to do with server resources (a website on our shared space is taking up too much of them!) rather than a security breach so nothing to worry about!

[Mike]

Hello everyone.

There does seem to be a growing problem with the speed and reliability of the server at the moment. I have been in touch with the hosting company and they have agreed to move me to a new server with updated with the latest versions of mySQL and php. This should hopefully solve the problems we have been experiencing.

The down side is that the forums will be down and read-only for somewhere between 2-5 days depending on the speed of the restore process at the other end.

I am going to start the process of the backup on Friday / Saturday morning so don't be surprised when the forum is inaccessible. This will make sure that posts don't get lost in the move. I am not going to say by 00:00 on Saturday morning because I bet some of you will be online trying to get that post in at 00:01 to prove the post wrong!

Apologies for the problems, hopefully it will make the site a more pleasurable experience for everyone!

[Mike]

Hello everyone. The forums seem to be up and running let me know if there are any problems!

[Mike]

Interestingly phpBB official website also suffered from the same problems as rileyuk. Weird.

[BarcelonAl]

It still seems slow to load pages to me Mike. Sometimes I have to refresh several times for it to load a page!

[johnriley1uk]

It's ultra-fast over here, so I wonder what the diffence is. Have you tried rebooting your Broadband Router?

[BarcelonAl]

It's the same at work, which is a super-fast connection...strange!

[Mike]

Have you tried clearing the browser cache?

[BarcelonAl]

Yeah, tried that...still seems to drag! Odd!

[johnriley1uk]

Are you on Virgin Broadband? If so, since the upgrades I have noticed that at some times of the day it slows and slows until it comes to a stop. The answer then is to switch of the router, waut a few seconds and then reconnect. It then finds a new path through the system and flies again.