Thread: Chat is DISABLED due to Security Breach

usually they do it 'just because they can' making you just the nth random victim. At other times they try to invade your 'box' to get another 'node' to cloak their path into whatever it is they want to invade. Does that make sense to you?

Dang, I just hate it when someone tries to invade my node...Joe, kill them somsabiches!!! Better yet, sic Josh on em.

Circle the wagons boys, they wanna get into our box!

Originally Posted by urleebird

What, exactly, is it that they would want to do...

As far as I can see, in our case they didn't do much of anything to our site except deposit a few files... mostly graphics for avatars, etc. Based on some date info it appears they hit us about the time we had an outage so maybe the site going down on the old server saved our bacon. I never thought I'd see a bright side to an outage, but one never knows.

On the flashchat support forum I've read horror stories where the hackers deleted all the member information, in another case they deleted all the files on the site, etc.... just plain malicious stuff. Another thing they like to do is change the look of the site... add they're own graphics, change screens, etc. Clearly there's nothing to "steal" from a chat site like ours, so I'd say it's "kids playing"... but many of these hackers are far from kids, at least in age. Their mentality is a different story.

There was a security alert and an upgrade to flashchat released about the time we first planned on moving the site... I stupidly delayed doing the upgrade and it kept getting put off as the move kept getting delayed. You'd think I'd have learned by now about keeping the importance of things in their proper perspective... but apparently not.

Live and learn

Check Lynn's shaving video, it MIGHT contain a virus. My AV went haywire when I tried dl-ing it.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

Check Lynn's shaving video, it MIGHT contain a virus. My AV went haywire when I tried dl-ing it.

I will when I get time... there's about 60MB of files (various resolutions and versions) to download, so that will take a while. I DL'ed about 25Mb yesterday (for another reason) and then stopped it... I've restarted the DL and will check later today or tomorrow. These, btw, are the last files on the site that needed to be virus checked.

It's also conceivable that the SRP site's video module isn't working correctly since the move... there's been several "surprises" since the move (besides the virus, lol) where functions that used to work don't... all have been explainable, usually related to file permissions, a config statement change we overlooked, or a software version issue between the new and old server. By far, the biggest issue has been file permissions (for you non-techy guys, that means who's is allowed to read/write/execute files on the server... & to you unix guys I'm talking about chmod). Anytime files moved their permissions seem to get changed... eg, on the old server everytime the host moved us from one CPU to another the permissions got reset to their (the host's) defaults no matter what we had them set to. (BTW, that's likely a contributor to the virus intrusion, since I had things locked down pretty tight.)

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

Check Lynn's shaving video, it MIGHT contain a virus.

Yeah!! I think I got it... I have been watching it, and now all I wanna do is buy more shaving stuff...

Nenad

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

Check Lynn's shaving video, it MIGHT contain a virus.

Well, I guess it might... at least in Nenad's context

But as for a true virus, my checker says nay. Let me know if you still suspect something... virus checkers aren't perfect

Any way to get a physical address on the hoople heads causing the damage? I'm not doing anything important next week... I could drop by and say "hi".

Originally Posted by azjoe

I know for a fact I DON'T... I got fed up w/IRC about the turn of the decade. Different strokes for different folks, though. But back then, MIIRC was the best, as I recall... it's what I used. My problem was with IRC, not the client.

Yeah, it's been at least that long for me, too. I was never fond of it.

But I'm willing to slap you with a trout for old times sake?

Joe, I checked with AVG Free. Since then I've also checked my comp with Norton (the antivirus, not the hone :P) and it came out clean. I am hoping it's something I picked up elsewhere, but I don't DL too many files and I'm careful about it, so when you started talking about hackers leaving their crap here, I thought there might be something to it.
Bill, would you like some company as explaining certain niceties in life is going to take a looooong time?