Jump to content

Forums Hacked


Recommended Posts

Yesterday, an exploit in our forum software allowed a malicious script to alter the templates and cause a script to run for every visitor viewing the forums using Internet Explorer at that time.

 

We are therefore advising that anyone who has visited the forum in the past 48 hours should run a virus scan on their system to see if anything has infected their system. It seems that only visitors using Internet Explorer were affected as this particular browser has security issues that Microsoft have not yet patched.

 

Also, the attack allowed the script in question to abuse the Mass Email feature of our forum software and as a result many members will have received an email from admin@strategycore.co.uk

 

Delete this email

 

This is not a real email account and unfortunately the security hole was big enough to allow the script to send a rather legitimate-looking email to many users.

 

The security hole has since been patched and we can only apologise for the inconvenience and recommend that all visitors to any website on the internet be vigilant and have an up-to-date antivirus system installed on their PC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As an addendum to the main post above, I'm making a suggestion regarding internet browsers below.

 

I didn't want to make it sound like I'm lecturing, so this is merely some free advice which you may be interested in.

 

Internet Explorer is, whilst the easiest choice for an internet browser as it is pre-installed with the operating system, full of bugs and not a good choice for an internet browser if you are concerned about the security of your PC.

 

Two excellent and very secure alternatives are: Firefox and Opera

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The mail sent out was a bit too obvious for me to fall for. no greetings, no content, no nothing.

 

Just this sentence and a link to an *.exe file:

"We have made a small tool for our site, I think you will guess what to do with it...."

 

 

While on the subject of browsers I thought this could be interesting to you:

 

https://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/April/browser.php

 

There are also some other neat stats on that site if you click around for a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, that's odd because the W3C website (I've lost the link to the stats at the mo) had Firefox at 25% of the market.

 

Good to see you two were quick off the mark though :eh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Look at the bright side of IE - with such a prevailing chunk of the pie it's also (almost) the only target. Nobody is going to waste his/her energy (if you don't consider creating viruses a total waste of energy in itself) for 8% if they can hurt 90...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
  • Create New...