Syrian hack

[Howard B]

I was about to post a reply to Jimi's OOTW last night about Andromeda globulars when instead a screen popped up proclaiming to be from the Syrian people. Is that why Jimi's post is now gone? What happened?

[Jim Chandler]

Hi Howard,

I'm sure Dragan will reply more fully when he has a chance, but the site got hacked last night & redirected to the political page you saw. According to the website host, that redirection was all that happened, but getting things back involved shutting down the site and restoring it from backup. In that process the last two or three days worth of posts got lost.

Jim

[Dragan]

Hey everybody,

Unfortunately, Howard and Jim are correct.

Two nights ago DSF was hacked by a group with a political message. Fortunately, the hack was not very malicious and no significant damage was done to the site. It appears the hacker was able to change some code to our site which redirected our URL to their URL. If anyone tried to log on during the hack, they would have seen our website load for a second or two and immediately afterwards they would have been redirected to the hackers URL. No viruses were associated with the redirect or the hackers site. So, in case you did get redirected and did see their message, you have nothing to worry about.

We are extremely fortunate that the redirect was the extent of the hack. It was purely a method for them to spread their message. Apparently this happens all the time and they just bounce from website to website. (forums such as ours are a popular target) Well, once we got to the bottom of it and figured it all out, we removed the code and did a full restore. But as Howard had encountered, the restore was to a few days prior and anything posted on the 7th, 8th & 9th was lost. Including Jimi's OOTW on Andromeda globulars. Not only did we lose posts, but we lost a couple new memberships! To those new members that had registered (Bill for example) over the weekend, please re-register. Your entire account was lost during the restore.

One last thing. It appears the attack was comletely random. Our host says that they encounter this kind of thing everyday. I was told that everything is intact and we shouldn't anticipate anymore issues. (fingers crossed)

Thanks everyone!
Dragan