Santa Worm & Sydenham Forum

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admin
Site Admin
Posts: 2575
Joined: 20 Sep 2004 21:49

Santa Worm & Sydenham Forum

Post by admin »

You may have heard reports of a new Internet worm called Santy. Since December 20th this has been attacking Bulletin Boards using the popular phpBB software. Sydenham Town Forum runs on phpBB but probably because of some defensive mechanisms already in place we have not yet been defaced as many other thousands of sites have been.

We plan to do some extra upgrades in the next few days to tighten security but upgrades sometimes go wrong and Santy may yet get lucky which may mean we have to take the Forum down for a short time. The main website does not use phpBB and runs on another server so should not be affected. If anything unfortunate happens a status message will be posted there.
Last edited by admin on 18 Jan 2005 18:49, edited 1 time in total.
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 2575
Joined: 20 Sep 2004 21:49

Post by admin »

Sydenham Town Forum has now been updated to phpBB version 2.0.11 which should eliminate any vulnerability to the santy worm.

If you see anything different - please post a message in the error section.

If you are a wormaholic you can find more about the attack here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4117711.stm

And a Merry Christmas to all our readers!
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 2575
Joined: 20 Sep 2004 21:49

Post by admin »

At about 4am yesterday the Forum came under a sustained and huge attack from Santy Zombies. We shifted more pages in a few hours than we normally do in a month.

This hacker's exploit was closed 10 days ago so the attacks have been unsuccesful. However, several times yesterday afternoon and evening the server was having difficulty because of the volume of attacks. You may have got spasmodic page errors.

About 11pm we put it some changes to diminish the problem. This seems to be working. Traffic is down by 90%.

I would like to apologise if this attack disrupted your browsing of he forums and the consequent drop in postings. Unfortuneately the net world has a group of people who do to websites what some of Sydenham people do to bus shelters.

But to the rest we wish you a Happy New Year!
admin
Site Admin
Posts: 2575
Joined: 20 Sep 2004 21:49

Post by admin »

We are under attack again!

A new version of the 'Santy' exploit surfaced today. We have taken action to filter attacks from this board. I hope I have not filtered out any genuine visitors - but if I have you will not see this

It is not just us under attack - Forums all over the world using the phpBB software are being targetted right now. The more popular the Forum - the nastier the attack. Some have become so overloaded that they have been taken offline.

Lets hope we can get through this one...

Geeks might want to visit:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=258892
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