Author Topic: Have to rebuild GT board (Read 8403 times)

Kevin Mahoney · **on:** June 15, 2014, 02:29:45 pm

Boys and Girls - We had and extreme spam attack last night. Because it was "full on" porn and such a large attack I had to move the GT board to the Trash and start over. There were more porn posts that there were normal posts. Usually when you report a spam post I take the time to get on it right away and eliminate it. Sometimes it is time consuming but not horrible... it takes time because you can only remove them one by one and you have to go back to the beginning after each removal. This was beyond horrible in terms of number of posts to eliminate so I felt I had no other choice. We have never had to to this before and I hope I don't ever have to do it again, but I guess we will just start over.

High On Octane · **Reply #1 on:** June 15, 2014, 02:54:25 pm

Glad you caught that right away Kevin. I clicked on ONE of them simply to report it to you and and it tried to download a virus to computer. Luckily I have some killer anti-virus and I don't think I was affected by it. But yeah, that was one nasty hit.

Scottie J

ace.cafe · **Reply #2 on:** June 15, 2014, 03:24:42 pm

I must have missed most of it.
When I got up this morning, all I saw was one spam/porn post that was all text.
I hate it that these spammers do this.

JVS · **Reply #3 on:** June 15, 2014, 03:30:34 pm

It was quite bad. So all posts are lost from the search archives? (For this section)

GreenMachine · **Reply #4 on:** June 15, 2014, 04:19:57 pm

I've been away for the past few days so I have no clue...What the hell don't they understand..This is a website whose intent is to share superior knowledge re. the operation/ technical aspects of Royal Enfield...Take your Porn and get outta here..

...........What a headache for the administrator......

phoenixt · **Reply #5 on:** June 15, 2014, 05:11:29 pm

Good thing they only attacked the Continental GT section. A lot of knowledge and information helpful to all Royal Enfield owners would have been lost if they would have posted to the other sections too.

Kevin maybe you should check with your hosting company (I am supposing that you are not self hosted) and see if they have a backup. If not I would certainly look at changing providers.

azcatfan · **Reply #6 on:** June 15, 2014, 05:45:35 pm

They seem to attack the first open forum on the page. Before the GT section was open the Iron Barrel section was getting hit.

Kevin Mahoney · **Reply #7 on:** June 16, 2014, 03:41:03 am

I only catch this stuff because you guys and gals are good at reporting it. I have called Rhett out of retirement and we will see what he can do. The spam has been up lately so we probably need some security updates

hyperhad · **Reply #8 on:** June 16, 2014, 03:49:17 am

What a nasty thing to happen. All that knowledge and expertise, gone. Fortunately, we are all still here, so we can rebuild. I saw no messages with spam. I was checking the board this morning, and all was ok. Now this.
Whatever we can do to help...

Kevin Mahoney · **Reply #9 on:** June 16, 2014, 04:05:04 am

there were only 154 subjects which is tiny by this boards standards. It will rebuild organically quickly

boggy · **Reply #10 on:** June 16, 2014, 04:43:16 pm

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We can make it better than it was. Better... stronger... faster."

SSdriver · **Reply #11 on:** June 16, 2014, 06:00:03 pm

Guess it's just like the RE....if you didn't have to work on it, it wouldn't be any fun.

Let's see if we can't make it even better!
...Jimmy

Hewie · **Reply #12 on:** June 16, 2014, 11:21:11 pm

Being a recent, arrival on this site, due to waiting for my new GT to Arrive TODAY or TOMORROW

Glad I cram read the previous library of post's, which contained a lot of useful info, Only shame is my mind doesn't have a very good back-up and is full of Viruses!!

Still hoping a burn up on the GT (when it arrives) will blow most of the nonsense in my head clear, apart of course from the learnings of the forums previous posts!

Although 500k's at 50 kph, running in is gonna make the mind wander a bit

Cheers

mattsz · **Reply #13 on:** June 17, 2014, 11:52:33 am

Quote from: phoenixt on June 15, 2014, 05:11:29 pm

Good thing they only attacked the Continental GT section. A lot of knowledge and information helpful to all Royal Enfield owners would have been lost if they would have posted to the other sections too.

I shudder to think - how easy it is for somebody to destroy such a vast and valuable resource!

Quote

Kevin maybe you should check with your hosting company (I am supposing that you are not self hosted) and see if they have a backup. If not I would certainly look at changing providers.

+1! Backing up is kindergarten computing. It's so important, even though many of us don't do it often enough, or at all (I'm guilty)! A forum like this shouldn't be vulnerable to that kind of attack. If the server that hosts this forum doesn't have backups, its time to look elsewhere - just what everyone at CMW has time to do, I'm sure!

gizzo · **Reply #14 on:** June 17, 2014, 12:05:27 pm

Quote from: Hewie on June 16, 2014, 11:21:11 pm

Being a recent, arrival on this site, due to waiting for my new GT to Arrive TODAY or TOMORROW

Glad I cram read the previous library of post's, which contained a lot of useful info, Only shame is my mind doesn't have a very good back-up and is full of Viruses!! Still hoping a burn up on the GT (when it arrives) will blow most of the nonsense in my head clear, apart of course from the learnings of the forums previous posts!

Although 500k's at 50 kph, running in is gonna make the mind wander a bit

Cheers

I reckon your place to Pine Creek and back ought to get it done? a lazy day in the saddle. Dont forget to vary that speed though!

02Electra · **Reply #15 on:** June 17, 2014, 03:57:31 pm

Kevin,

Can you check whether SMF supports something like
VBulletin's "Spam-o-matic"?

I am a Moderator on an Indian FIAT Forum and we got much relief after we installed this plugin for the forum. Now its automatically scanning posts for spam and most of the time it sends away spam before it can get an opportunity to show up on the forum. Sometimes it gets overenthusiastic and puts user posts for approval by Moderator if it contains a link but it's a small price to pay for the overall quality of the forum.

Regards,
Sunny.

hyperhad · **Reply #16 on:** June 18, 2014, 02:26:41 am

So let's start rebuilding all those posts everyone!

Kevin Mahoney · **Reply #17 on:** June 18, 2014, 04:45:50 am

Brother Rhett has upped the security on the board. Let's see what happens

DaveTheYank · **Reply #18 on:** June 18, 2014, 06:16:21 am

Nice going!

I just had to type words and read words to get in, to verify I'm not a spambot.
I'm happy to do this if it helps, but what do other forums do to prevent spam attacks that don't require their members to do this?

Kevin Mahoney · **Reply #19 on:** June 18, 2014, 03:55:03 pm

Do you have to enter that stuff EVERY time or just once.

olhogrider · **Reply #20 on:** June 18, 2014, 08:54:32 pm

There were no words to copy. I gave up and waited until morning. Everything was fine then.

hyperhad · **Reply #21 on:** June 18, 2014, 09:10:33 pm

I had trouble as well. I could not get in last evening. Today, no problem!

DaveTheYank · **Reply #22 on:** June 19, 2014, 10:17:02 am

All good. I haven't gone through that again since the first time.