Security
Sunday, 8 February 2009
It seems that this server has now been found and the forum is being constantly hit, we had a little time whereby such attacks were rare or did not occur, please could users be vigilant. The aim here is to infect this forum using bots, a large attack has the potential to create almost a DDos attack, a situation suffered by many forums, you will find occasionally that our forum does not load or you get an error-page, this is for two reasons the first is that our server has millions of users and at times there is immense traffic and also because bots continually attack the servers.
There is little we can do, save for banning IP range, because blocking the host name has little effect, they simply use a proxy IP, I have therefore decided that new accounts will be submitted to spamcop.net and spamhaus.org for checking, in the hope we will not have to many false positives.
I would like to reassure users, that all is being done that is able to be, internet users are under attack no matter where on the internet they surf, it could be a gardening forum or a well known internet site, e-mails are constantly searched for and addresses attacked, all to aid evil-doers and destroy the internet. I would hope that users have adequate pc protection given that the attacks attempted at this site afflict the whole internet and not just here, malevolent HTML has been found to affect all types of sites many well-known and social net-working sites are or were heavily afflicted.
I would hope that users take advantage of our “Software, useful programmes, utilities and websites”section, here we endeavour to list useful software such as Ad-Aware, SpyBot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster. It is also worth looking at a good anti-virus some of which is listed although there are others and the list needs updating adding to, all in all it means extra vigilance by admin and perhaps some thought as to identifying genuine accounts, perhaps certain key-words during registration, user-names can be altered afterwards.
Hopefully users will take their internet security seriously, they will have up to date security running and will scan their machines often, this will present less of a threat to the forum and will help to cut down on attacks. Bots are not all bad for without them the internet would be a slower place, we use them here on this forum for instance to carry out tasks such as filtering or you use them when you play games online or perhaps more famously when using messenger, messenger relies almost wholly upon bots.
Bots patrol the internet they harvest information and use it to update information or index, this information permits users up to date access and faster page load speed, yet as in all things the human race has its unsavoury elements, individuals that wish to misuse good things to their own advantage. In our case we are targeted by spambots, these bots use home pc’s to distribute targeted spam or even randomised links, such links could lead to porn sites of the most disgusting variety or even to phising sites designed to fool web-users.
They work because home-users do not take home pc security seriously, in fact many machines here in the UK are infected already, allowing criminals to attack forums such as ours remotely, the aim of course is to harvest new addresses in order to capture new machines/Zombies, or in the case of our last forum to bring it to its knees. I can never understand why ISP’s permit hackers, spammers and their ilk to use their services, knowing that their actions are illegal, immoral and exploitative, perhaps though as many acquaintances have said “security companies earn their bread by combating such individuals”, perhaps then there is no monetary impulse to completely destroy them.
So could users please use adequate security software, much of which is free and listed on the forum, thank you for your time admin
There is little we can do, save for banning IP range, because blocking the host name has little effect, they simply use a proxy IP, I have therefore decided that new accounts will be submitted to spamcop.net and spamhaus.org for checking, in the hope we will not have to many false positives.
I would like to reassure users, that all is being done that is able to be, internet users are under attack no matter where on the internet they surf, it could be a gardening forum or a well known internet site, e-mails are constantly searched for and addresses attacked, all to aid evil-doers and destroy the internet. I would hope that users have adequate pc protection given that the attacks attempted at this site afflict the whole internet and not just here, malevolent HTML has been found to affect all types of sites many well-known and social net-working sites are or were heavily afflicted.
I would hope that users take advantage of our “Software, useful programmes, utilities and websites”section, here we endeavour to list useful software such as Ad-Aware, SpyBot Search and Destroy and Spyware Blaster. It is also worth looking at a good anti-virus some of which is listed although there are others and the list needs updating adding to, all in all it means extra vigilance by admin and perhaps some thought as to identifying genuine accounts, perhaps certain key-words during registration, user-names can be altered afterwards.
Hopefully users will take their internet security seriously, they will have up to date security running and will scan their machines often, this will present less of a threat to the forum and will help to cut down on attacks. Bots are not all bad for without them the internet would be a slower place, we use them here on this forum for instance to carry out tasks such as filtering or you use them when you play games online or perhaps more famously when using messenger, messenger relies almost wholly upon bots.
Bots patrol the internet they harvest information and use it to update information or index, this information permits users up to date access and faster page load speed, yet as in all things the human race has its unsavoury elements, individuals that wish to misuse good things to their own advantage. In our case we are targeted by spambots, these bots use home pc’s to distribute targeted spam or even randomised links, such links could lead to porn sites of the most disgusting variety or even to phising sites designed to fool web-users.
They work because home-users do not take home pc security seriously, in fact many machines here in the UK are infected already, allowing criminals to attack forums such as ours remotely, the aim of course is to harvest new addresses in order to capture new machines/Zombies, or in the case of our last forum to bring it to its knees. I can never understand why ISP’s permit hackers, spammers and their ilk to use their services, knowing that their actions are illegal, immoral and exploitative, perhaps though as many acquaintances have said “security companies earn their bread by combating such individuals”, perhaps then there is no monetary impulse to completely destroy them.
So could users please use adequate security software, much of which is free and listed on the forum, thank you for your time admin
Posted byDVNFadmin at 10:47
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