Site outage over the weekend!

[Phmode]

Some of the more astute amongst you may have noticed that we lost transmission from Phmode Towers just in time for the weekend, the wind blew down the coat hanger we use for an aerial 

We have no idea what caused the problems; the site was taken down by Heart Internet because the problems were causing their server response to be degraded and although we know what they told us, we have not been able to discover what caused the problems they reported.

Our intermediate host, who is far from a forum expert but built and hosts the EuroKClub site for us, performed a fresh load of the SMF software on which the forum runs, together with re-loading the member and Topic databases so nothing was lost and we seem to have gained a few new features such as the Spell Check feature on the new-post text entry box (well spotted Costas).

We need to keep an eye on the forum over the next few days as not knowing what caused the problems means we have no way of knowing if they have been cured!

There was no evidence of us having been hacked and although the end result was a denial of service, there is no evidence of that being deliberately or maliciously triggered.

So, welcome back and if the site does suddenly disappear once more, please be patient.

Brian (who wished he had paid more attention in Forum Software Development classes when he was in school  )

[Matt]

Bri if you've got some useful error messages send them over and I'll try and do some internetting.  I'd like to find out what caused this so we can ensure no further trouble.

[Phmode]

We finally have some answers to the question 'What the hell went wrong?'

Heart internet finally came up with a list of hundreds of ip addresses that keep bombarding the host server with access requests.

This is still happening even after the re-install of the software. Most of these are from bots and one of them was traced to a well-respected and very long-time member of our community. It is his domain that has been hacked and this has happened down the years with no explanation or resolution. He is an IT professional so knows his way around this stuff and we are still working to block the attacks that are emanating from his domain.

A blocking filter has been put in place to sort out most of these problems but by definition this filter may exclude some new or relatively inactive members.

I would ask you all to look to your own system security; perform malware scans with your security software if you have it, if you don't, yer banned so get some pronto!

Although we now know what we are looking for, there is no guarantee that the site will remain up so please bear with us in the meantime and good luck with your malware scans