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Brutal Five Days of Hacking

dougd

dougd

Joined
Dec 9, 2014
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Location
Penacook, NH on a back road
Hello All, It's been a long five days of withdrawal from our board. I came back from a long earned North Maine Woods retreat for a week to find on Sat morning we were hacked again. So much for the last two days of vacation. In a nutshell I contacted the IT guy who started working his magic which took time. From what I could gather thanks to folks reaching out to me about VBulletin which is the service which is the software backbone of the site had a "glitch" in it which left an open door for hackers as I read it. I may be wrong but that is how I see it. When this happened before I paid for extra security but in this day and age I don't think any website is immune for this type of hack. Now what I could gather from the IT guy is that on VBulletin he had to schedule time with them to get the site back up and running again so I think, in my minds eye that says that VB was busy with this stuff and CT was not the only place hacked.

It has been a very trying time on the back end of the board and today when I clicked on the link for the Xth amount of times in the last going on five days and it came up I literally shouted out loud and did a nice long string of swear words of relief! I scared the heck out of my GF. From there is was frequently shutting down and restarting and testing the link so I think we are good again

dougd
 
Last edited:
From my reading the vBulletin patch that was issued back in May had it's own issue. Early last week somebody revealed that exploit publicly instead of notifying vBulletin first. A new patch was issued very quickly but in the intervening days many sites using vBulletin were hacked. While the patch was out prior to the hack here I'm assuming that because you were away it was never applied and thus "Rey" was able to hack this site.

Seems like it was all a confluence of bad timing, if you had been around you might have installed the patch in time but because you were not the site was left open to intruders.

Seems like the options are as follows:

- Hire a full time IT guy (probably not feasible for this site)
- Never go away again, no paddling just sit at home and monitor 24/7 (I wouldn't suggest this to ANYONE)
- Live with the possibility that this can happen again, don't freak out and know that all can be made good in short order

The good thing is that there isn't really anything in the way of private information stored on the site, a hacker could and may have had access to user names and passwords but what else is there here? As long as users don't use the same password that they use here. I know lots of users here such as myself use the same user name in many places the critical thing is to not use the same password combo that you use elsewhere.

Anyone who has used the same user name / password combo elsewhere should immediately rectify that as any information stolen here will likely be available to other hackers who can try to use those credential to access other sites. That usage might not happen anytime soon but could be used months or years from now.
 
recped and all. We are on a limited budget here and I think everyone knows that. I can't afford to keep our IT guy on a retainer and was lucky enough to find someone who is willing to work with me when stuff happens at a minutes call. You have no idea how much of a blessing this is and I have worked hard to keep a good working relationship with him. In my going on four years running this site I have spent well over 100 hours trying to find someone who will stick around, so far we are going on almost 2 years so I am feeling very lucky.

Am I going to sit home and monitor the site none stop? I'm already working for free so no that just isn't going to happen, I need a break now and then! So as recped says live with the knowledge that this will probably happen again. Maybe if we were some corporate money filled site we might do better but we are what we are.

I will say this what member info is on this site is limited to username and email addresses which weighs heavily on me during these attacks but there is not personal info. What makes me a mess is the potential loss of all your posts which are filled with more information than any other website IMO. To lose the builds/trips/DIY stuff would be a huge loss.

I know from the slew of emails I got how important this site is to this community. Thank you for putting up with this.
 
Thank you Doug. I'm sorry you had to deal with this problem, especially coming home from vacation. You are a very much appreciated, capable, caretaker of this site!
 
Thanks and yay! Been reading this board a lot more the last few months and happy it’s back up. Great community and resource.
 
dougd said:
recped and all.

Am I going to sit home and monitor the site none stop? I'm already working for free so no that just isn't going to happen, I need a break now and then

Agreed, you need a break and you need to feel the group will not publicly criticize a decision made by an assistant while your gone. I was very disheartened when this happened recently, and I agree wholeheartedly with DaveO’s decision to close the gun thread.
Click to expand...
 
Very happy to see you up and running again...Such a shame that these low life's get their kicks at someone else's expense. That part I just don't get.
The annual fundraiser doesn't necessarily need to be just that, maybe twice a year?
Thanks for all the hard work,

Mike T.
 
Got scared!! Happy all is good to go!! Thank you for the great work!!
 
Thanks very much for your time and effort to get the site back up. I really missed being able to visit the site, so it was great to be able to get back on it. Thanks again!
 
Doug - Thanks so much for all you do on our behalf. I too was shocked when I clicked on the site the other day. While the hack was a bit more colorful, lots of shooting colors, I'm much happier having our site back the way it belongs. Thanks for being so diligent; and please pass that on to the IT guy as well.

That's all for now. Take care and until next time...be well.

snapper
 
Gee Doug I missed you in the NMW.. We were there five days too. Hope you got some paddling in!
Let us know when the bank account needs feeding.
IMG_0912-2.jpg
 
Yep, missed reading the posts here... still, it wasn't as bad as the hack that happened at Canadian canoe routes where all kinds of porn started showing up, the hacker getting in without registration I guess. Not that there's anything wrong with porn of course. OMG what would parents think about that, esp when their kids are surfing the net at their unsupervised friends'.place.....

Thanks Doug!
 
we can't be blaming Doug or canoetripping, thousands of sites were hit, and most of them had paid staffers and IT people. we've all gotten bad patches before, heck Microsoft was notorious for issuing bad updates followed a week later by a pile of bad patches (security updates), which then were followed by more patches to fix the patches, which were followed by ........ and on and on.
people need to remember that Doug is basically an unpaid volunteer, and as such we should have no expectation of perfection
 
Great Job Doug !

I kept the Faith !
I knew You would get it straight !

Thanks !

Jim
 
Just logged in and am happy the site is back up. I will not lie, I missed it terribly. I’ll be there when the fundraiser starts. Thanks Doug.
Jim
 
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