FTO hacked!

[EMSC]

I've been getting a front page error for about a week now with the scrolling news banner... See the image. It appears in Chrome for me both on PC and tablet. Haven't tried IE or Firefox...

[Marc_C]

It happens in Firefox (latest and previous versions) on a desktop PC as well.

[Admin]

Thanks, EMSC and Marc_C. I had been stumped by what was creating that, and after trying to identify the issue I put it on hold over the weekend so that I could ski. That turned out to be a mistake, for it was a hack.

Many folks noticed that FTO was taken down this morning. That's because a spammer who had implemented that hack used the exploit to upload PHP files to the server to send spam emails using our machine. At the time it was taken down around 7:30 a.m. the script had queued some 31,000 emails. In a way, though, that was a good thing because it created the hint that I needed to understand what had been done.

We're now back up and running after identifying the exploit, removing the offending files and scripts, and strengthening site security to patch that hole. You'll also notice that the featured content is now functioning normally.

[Tony Crocker]

The screenshot EMSC posted displays when I try to find any feature articles on FTO. I was on the phone with Big Sky's marketing director this morning and wanted to show her the feature I wrote when they hosted Patrick and me in 2006. Hopefully there is a current system bug and the features have not been broken since the site facelift in December.

[Admin]

These SOB hackers continue to make my life a living hell.

[Marc_C]

These SOB hackers continue to make my life a living hell.

Ya know, if you'd just order that Russian bride already........

[Admin]

These SOB hackers continue to make my life a living hell.

Ya know, if you'd just order that Russian bride already........

The French Canadian one I already purchased is enough already.

[EMSC]

It's back like a bad habit....

[Admin]

I'm at the end of my rope. ..

[flyover]

Admin,

I'm sure you and your crack team of highly-paid codemonkeys know this already, but this site is buggier than Angela Merkel's cell phone.

For 2 weeks now, I've been getting this message at work (we don't block anything based on content):

Against my better judgment, over the last couple weeks I've visited the site a few times and logged on once (well, twice now) from home. On the Mac at home (Safari), intermittently, the formatting has been extremely weird and/or garbled.

Best of luck.

[Admin]

I unfortunately am all too aware. Beginning February 14th, a group of hackers gained entry to the website and begin sending spam messages via our server by the tens of thousands. I've been working diligently to try to plug the hole, but thus far have been unsuccessful. I think that perhaps today I finally found a solution, and with fingers crossed if things look good in a day or two I will begin publishing news again.

[EMSC]

I'm sure you and your crack team of highly-paid codemonkeys know this already, but this site is buggier than Angela Merkel's cell phone.

For me, less buggy, but the past week or two it's been VERY slow to load compared to other websites or 'normal' times... Certainly related to the hackers I'm sure, but thought you should be aware.

[Admin]

Thanks. It is indeed related to the hackers. When they stack up the mail queue with 30,000 or 40,000 spam messages, it drags the server to a crawl.

[Admin]

I split this off into its own topic -- it seemed like the right thing to do.

[Admin]

So far my efforts seem to be working. Fingers are crossed. Yahoo mail users should be aware, however, that they've apparently blacklisted mail coming from our servers due to the overwhelming quantities of spam, so if you're registered with us (forums, news, etc. ) with a Yahoo address you're not going to be receiving those emails.