J
john
Guest
I apologise for the unavailability of the forum from last Saturday until today.
This outage was necessary because of security issues. As you are all aware, the forum was hacked just over a week ago. I believed the damage had been repaired, however the person in question (apparently a teenaged Italian male), had left a script behind to allow him access at will to the server. He used this access to upload a movie file of a pre-release DVD. This was then downloaded at an alarming rate on Saturday, setting alarm bells off at our ISP. They then suspended Caudata.org. Thus began my woe.
After working with the ISP and spending the last 2 days picking caudata.org apart, I am now confident that the site is secure again. I have also just paid $100 to the forum software company for the latest version (which has added security features and anti-spam posting facilities which are very effective).
I know a lot of you were inconvenienced by the fact that you couldn't access your favourite website for a few days. Given that this site is something I do in my spare time and not my job, the last few days have been a lot more inconvenient for me personally (long phone calls to the ISP in the middle of the night, rushing through support contracts with Discusware, picking each and every file on the server apart...). I think you can imagine that I don't wish to repeat this experience.
It's good to be back. Let's stay that way. Thank you for your support.
This outage was necessary because of security issues. As you are all aware, the forum was hacked just over a week ago. I believed the damage had been repaired, however the person in question (apparently a teenaged Italian male), had left a script behind to allow him access at will to the server. He used this access to upload a movie file of a pre-release DVD. This was then downloaded at an alarming rate on Saturday, setting alarm bells off at our ISP. They then suspended Caudata.org. Thus began my woe.
After working with the ISP and spending the last 2 days picking caudata.org apart, I am now confident that the site is secure again. I have also just paid $100 to the forum software company for the latest version (which has added security features and anti-spam posting facilities which are very effective).
I know a lot of you were inconvenienced by the fact that you couldn't access your favourite website for a few days. Given that this site is something I do in my spare time and not my job, the last few days have been a lot more inconvenient for me personally (long phone calls to the ISP in the middle of the night, rushing through support contracts with Discusware, picking each and every file on the server apart...). I think you can imagine that I don't wish to repeat this experience.
It's good to be back. Let's stay that way. Thank you for your support.