Back online!

[frightened spouse]

Thank you for getting the site back up

Has felt like I'd lost a limb over the last few days.

[Casehardened]

please let me or a moderator know if you spot anything that looks wrong or different and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can. Thanks!

Hi Phil,

Member Sparks has noted that the log-in/out boxes have disappeared & was logged in automatically (I have already set Google Chrome to this option so didn't notice)

I have just noticed that I am presently unable to edit posts; the 'clock' just keeps whirring round!

[Casehardened]

Can I echo WGO's thanks for your hard work (and sleepless nights!)

What a pity these 'hackers' (I can think of several less polite terms) can't put their undoubted abilities towards the common good as you have done.

[whatsgoingon?]

Well done and thanks for all your hard work!

[webmoo]

Hi everyone,

We'd like to apologise for the recent downtime on the site.

Someone decided that we would be a good target to hack and so decided to deface and disable the site.

The attack was random - a vulnerability in some vbulletin (the forum software) code was discovered recently and the hackers used this to deface many forums across many sites running affected versions of vbulletin. Unfortunately, we were running one of these versions.

The board has been upgraded and the vulnerability has been fixed so we are now back and running.

Please note:

1. After extensive checking, there is no evidence to suggest that the hackers were able to obtain any personal details of any users. Personal details are stored in an encrypted format meaning that even if the raw data was extracted from the database, it would be meaningless. However, there is no way to be absolutely 100% certain what the hackers were able to do, so it is recommended that you change your password on your account. To do this, go to "Forum actions" at the top, then click "Edit Profile". If you use the same username and password combination on other sites, it is also recommended that you change those passwords too. We apologise for any inconvenience that this will cause.
2. I've done a lot of work to try to ensure that everything is back as it was before we got hacked, but there is a huge amount of data on here and it's easy to miss something somewhere. I've run every automated data integrity check I have but if any of the data itself has been modified the checks wont pick these up. Thus, please let me or a moderator know if you spot anything that looks wrong or different and we'll get it fixed as soon as we can. Thanks!

We apologise once again for the disruption.

Best regards,

Phil (Site owner and chief techie)