first i want to thank everyone for their patience and support over the last week. it has been an arduous task and, although not 100% yet, it will get there.
on april 1, CF was hacked. no personal information was compromised as far as we can tell, so there are no worries there, but just in case...i would advise everyone to change their CF password to something completely unrelated to other important passwords that you use. i called the police and their internet division, but they were of no help...and anyway, i heard a voice message saying they would be out of the office for a couple of days anyway...no help.
i think the hacker was just after $$...some of you may have noticed funny advertisements that day, and a warning about the confiker virus in red. it looks like they changed the advertisements and my paypal information to get some extra cash.
IMPORTANT - for those that purchased SS status within the last couple of weeks or renewed their subscriptions in the last couple of weeks...whether your subscription either manually renews or autorenews, please reapply for SS status and make sure the email on it is pkim@intuitiveelement.com. that is the only email i will use for paypal.
i digress...i got really nervous about all this happening because of the specific account that was hacked. it was one of lee's old admin accounts that had not been demodded yet. they had full access to the admin control panel where they could have basically erased CF as we know it. for this not happening, i was incredibly thankful, but also very nervous.
i was already scheduled to get security patches and problem fixes for CF and was within days of having that done when this all happened. i felt that i could not wait days. i felt that waiting that long and have more attempts on CFwas more of a danger than trying to upgrade so CF could be patched up security wise. i hired a good programmer, but knew he didnt have the specific vbulletin experience required on a site like this. however, i felt that taking a chance in this direction was better than being a sitting duck...so i took the plunge and went for the upgrade. in retrospect, i underestimated how beastly the compliance issues with the modifications in relation to vbulletin...and also the sheer number of modifications that had to be changed and checked.
all of you know how the upgrade went, it was really rocky to be understated. there were so many technical problems on the back end to go into, but its safe to say that there was no end in sight even after i hired another programmer to help with the issues. so after about 4-5 days of troubleshooting and being down, i decided that we could not afford to go down this route any longer as none of the programmers could tell me what kind of timeframe we were looking at to get CF up, so we decided to head back and revert to the old board again.
this is where we stand today. the board is not 100% yet, but it will be in the near future. first, we are working on getting CF as secure as possible. many of the security issues that caused these problems have been patched and we are looking for more ways to make it more secure. some of the issues we are running into are the login issue, quick reply, rep system, pm's, and messaging issues so those are noted.
again, thank you for your prayers and support last week. Lord willing, we will never go through this again.
on april 1, CF was hacked. no personal information was compromised as far as we can tell, so there are no worries there, but just in case...i would advise everyone to change their CF password to something completely unrelated to other important passwords that you use. i called the police and their internet division, but they were of no help...and anyway, i heard a voice message saying they would be out of the office for a couple of days anyway...no help.
i think the hacker was just after $$...some of you may have noticed funny advertisements that day, and a warning about the confiker virus in red. it looks like they changed the advertisements and my paypal information to get some extra cash.
IMPORTANT - for those that purchased SS status within the last couple of weeks or renewed their subscriptions in the last couple of weeks...whether your subscription either manually renews or autorenews, please reapply for SS status and make sure the email on it is pkim@intuitiveelement.com. that is the only email i will use for paypal.
i digress...i got really nervous about all this happening because of the specific account that was hacked. it was one of lee's old admin accounts that had not been demodded yet. they had full access to the admin control panel where they could have basically erased CF as we know it. for this not happening, i was incredibly thankful, but also very nervous.
i was already scheduled to get security patches and problem fixes for CF and was within days of having that done when this all happened. i felt that i could not wait days. i felt that waiting that long and have more attempts on CFwas more of a danger than trying to upgrade so CF could be patched up security wise. i hired a good programmer, but knew he didnt have the specific vbulletin experience required on a site like this. however, i felt that taking a chance in this direction was better than being a sitting duck...so i took the plunge and went for the upgrade. in retrospect, i underestimated how beastly the compliance issues with the modifications in relation to vbulletin...and also the sheer number of modifications that had to be changed and checked.
all of you know how the upgrade went, it was really rocky to be understated. there were so many technical problems on the back end to go into, but its safe to say that there was no end in sight even after i hired another programmer to help with the issues. so after about 4-5 days of troubleshooting and being down, i decided that we could not afford to go down this route any longer as none of the programmers could tell me what kind of timeframe we were looking at to get CF up, so we decided to head back and revert to the old board again.
this is where we stand today. the board is not 100% yet, but it will be in the near future. first, we are working on getting CF as secure as possible. many of the security issues that caused these problems have been patched and we are looking for more ways to make it more secure. some of the issues we are running into are the login issue, quick reply, rep system, pm's, and messaging issues so those are noted.
again, thank you for your prayers and support last week. Lord willing, we will never go through this again.
