Website Down / Hacked into.

Submitted by NorthPort on

Apologies for the site being down.

Unfortunately someone hacked into the website over the last day.

 

Hopefully they move on to something more productive with their lives.

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NorthPort Topic starter Sun, 29 Apr 2018 - 13:24

Apologies all. The website was hacked again last night. It should be back up (and a little quicker) now.

Bearsman Mon, 30 Apr 2018 - 08:45

David just letting you know, I access the site using a bookmark and I am now being redirected to spam sites when I click on the url. Some sites it takes me to are blocked by my anti virus as danderous sites. I am always able to gain access on my second attempt to enter the site.

Site is still slow as buggery for me however. Its taken me 14 minutes to log on and write this...

NorthPort Topic starter Mon, 30 Apr 2018 - 19:53

Thanks Bearsman. What browser are you using? Can you tell me if you have different browsers to choose from? I had the same issue with Google Chrome, but using Microsoft Edge things work well. I've uninstall Ed Chrome and will reinstall it to see if that fixes the problem. I was having the same issue with redirections. I was kind of hoping it had only affected me. Sorry to hear its also stuffed yours up too.

Bearsman Tue, 1 May 2018 - 06:43

I use Chrome...was redirected again now when accessed the site. No issuse when using Firefox, except moving around the site is still slow.

NorthPort Topic starter Tue, 1 May 2018 - 07:39

I'm away interstate for a week. I'll try reinstalling Chrome when I'm back to see if that resolves the redirect issues.

The speed is definitely slower on computer compared to using mobile phone to access the site. Very strange. I'm eating up migrating the site over to a new platform. Just trying to find the best way to achieve that.

Bearsman Tue, 1 May 2018 - 09:07

I tried it using iPad and got redirected again. So looks like Safari is affected too...

I worked as  a Moderator on a site a couple of years back and we had a lot of issues like this. While I have no idea how to fix it, the hacking issues were solved by only allowing site acces to Australian IP addresses. Seems nearly all hackings come from OS...hope this helps.

The site I was on was powered by VBulletin, and if you're considering using them, I can tell you there was a lot of bugs in it and a lot of work maintaing it. Every time there was an upgrade it caused havoc,

admin Tue, 8 May 2018 - 22:38

Hopefully it is fixed (for the most part). FYI, the Database was unaffected. The actual file structure had been compromised - Possibly due to a weak password from an old admin account that was no longer being used.

That's been addressed. The extra long outage has been due to limitations and issues with my hosting company.
With a bit of luck that should also be sorted!

If users could let me know about any problems they have with missing functions on this website (or others that they'd like added). Let me know by posting here and I will try to sort them out :)

admin Tue, 8 May 2018 - 22:39

If you could let me know if the website is quicker or slower , that too would help greatly.