Well, by now many of you have seen firsthand the frustration that we've experienced today.
Liftlines was hacked today, not once, but twice. We spent the majority of today trying to fix things around here. Two exploits have been floating around the Internet this week, one attacking a security hole in PHP, and one attacking a hole in phpBB, the software that runs Liftlines. Many, many Internet websites depend on phpBB to manage their user forums, and many have been hit this week by hackers. We were unfortunately not immune.
We believe that we've fixed the security vulnerabilities, and we've restored the forum data from backup. About the only thing that we've been unable to rectify, as far as we can tell right now, is the user "country flag" selection, but that's certainly trivial. The initial attack happened shortly before our backup was performed during the early morning hours of today, Dec. 22, so we were forced to utilize the backup performed during the early morning hours of Dec. 21. Thus, any forum activity after approximately 2am EST on Dec. 21 -- postings, new user registrations, etc. -- has been lost. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
We also apologize for the email that the hackers sent through the Liftlines system to all of our users. One positive outcome of that email is that it has allowed us to identify the hacker through his IP address, and we will pursue this individual via all means available. Special thanks to our user Chromer for astutely identifying the hacker.
We thank our users for their concern about the hacked Liftlines forums, for we received many, many emails today regarding our plight.
Liftlines was hacked today, not once, but twice. We spent the majority of today trying to fix things around here. Two exploits have been floating around the Internet this week, one attacking a security hole in PHP, and one attacking a hole in phpBB, the software that runs Liftlines. Many, many Internet websites depend on phpBB to manage their user forums, and many have been hit this week by hackers. We were unfortunately not immune.
We believe that we've fixed the security vulnerabilities, and we've restored the forum data from backup. About the only thing that we've been unable to rectify, as far as we can tell right now, is the user "country flag" selection, but that's certainly trivial. The initial attack happened shortly before our backup was performed during the early morning hours of today, Dec. 22, so we were forced to utilize the backup performed during the early morning hours of Dec. 21. Thus, any forum activity after approximately 2am EST on Dec. 21 -- postings, new user registrations, etc. -- has been lost. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
We also apologize for the email that the hackers sent through the Liftlines system to all of our users. One positive outcome of that email is that it has allowed us to identify the hacker through his IP address, and we will pursue this individual via all means available. Special thanks to our user Chromer for astutely identifying the hacker.
We thank our users for their concern about the hacked Liftlines forums, for we received many, many emails today regarding our plight.