Hacking Attempts

[John W.]

Sometimes users will complain about getting 403 Errors here on our server. These are often caused by special characters in posts that can be used to inject commands into the SQL database that runs the discussion board as well as much of the rest of the site. Our security precautions have increased significantly since we were hacked three times last year during the Hampton Convention.

In the last two hours we have had 300 attempts from Beijing China to attack our site. This isn't really unusual. I just point it out to let you know of the constant barrage of attacks on this website. Imagine the number of attacks on the big sites like Chase Bank or Walmart. We read everyday about another breach of user data from some company or university.

I want you to know that we are taking this seriously even though we really don't host anyone's financial data on our site. We do take as many precautions as possible. Our hosting provider is our partner in trying to assure our security.

If you get a 403 error check your message for any special characters or some dirty words that might trigger our security system to block your post.

[Ara G.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

That's amazing. 300 attempts from Beijing China in 2 hours. Boy could I make some very improper and non-PC comments on that one...but I will leave it alone. Thanks for protecting our site!

[Kevin G.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Please excuse the ignorance but.....exactly what or how does someone benefit by "hacking" this site?

[Ken A.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

How do you know & who & how many times. Can I apply the answers to my computer?

[Mike E.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Many times these are "Bot" attacks or an automated attack and they chose targets at random just looking for weak points. It's probably not someone in his basement like you see in the movies. It could even be malware running on someone's computer completely and they are completely unaware its going on.

Thanks John for keeping us updated.


Mike

[Joe R.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Guys, they are attacking this site to obtain your password. I know this sounds crazy but some people are so lazy that they use only one password for all the sites they use day after day.
If you do that you are just asking someone to get into your bank account.

A word to the wise,

JR

[Rob M.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Guys, they are attacking this site to obtain your password. I know this sounds crazy but some people are so lazy that they use only one password for all the sites they use day after day.
If you do that you are just asking someone to get into your bank account.

A word to the wise,

JR

that is one of the possible reasons, other reason could be to use our server as another hub to attack from (and be even more anonymous). Sometimes the attacked server is within an interesting network segment and the server then can be used (since it might be trusted as being secure) to attack other computers in that same network.

Many other reasons are out there why apparent uninteresting servers/computers are attacked. When you think you got nothing to hide/loose or that the data on a computer is not valuable you make a BIG mistake!!!

[Ray G.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Thank You John and Rob for all the work you do in making this site work and help members learn and prosper.

Just "APPLE" selling 3 million iPhone a day makes me wonder if eventually the entire internet will be full of junk making it impossible to distinguish real content sending the world back to using brick phones with a 6 mile usable radius.

How BIG can a server farm be ?server farm.jpeg

Inquiring minds want to know.

[Gary C.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Ray,

Server Farms, plural. Internet architecture is essentially unlimited as long as there are enough IP (Internet Protocol) addresses available and the Internet highway is designed properly. With that said the more user traffic the wider the bandwidth has to be. The Internet is sort of time sharing. Internet Network design counts on not all users downloading a movie from the same origin source to their smart device at the same time. Bandwidth - fiber connectivity and network equipment capabilities are the limiting factor.

Unfortunately, there will always be junk on the Internet as long as someone's paying the freight for it and can hack innocent servers/PC's to use those devices for distribution of the junk.

As Rob said, hackers goal is to plant something undetected on an unsuspecting server or PC and sending junk out to the masses. This approach keeps the hackers from being blacklisted.

Gary
....

[Terry M.]

Re: Hacking Attempts

Thank You John and Rob for all the work you do in making this site work and help members learn and prosper.

Just "APPLE" selling 3 million iPhone a day makes me wonder if eventually the entire internet will be full of junk making it impossible to distinguish real content sending the world back to using brick phones with a 6 mile usable radius.

[b]How BIG can a server farm be ?[\b][ATTACH=CONFIG]55836[/ATTACH]

Inquiring minds want to know.

How big? You wouldn't believe. My employer provides electricity to some of them and I am shocked at the power they consume. They are among our largest customers since the manufacturing base in this country hit the skids.