Posted:
Sat Feb 12, 2011 11:49 amby AlisterC
I can't believe how much trouble flight simming sites seem to attract! Is it just that I hear about it when a sim site has been hacked? or is this happening all the time to all the other websites out there? Sheesh
I too can't understand why someone would hack into a simming site, when we're all a pretty decent bunch generally.
Posted:
Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:32 pmby toprob
It might appear that FS sites are prime targets, but no more so than anything else. If it's on the web, it's a target, no matter what the site is there for. I'm sure that nobody who hacks these sites actually knows or cares what they do, just how they do it, and what exploits they can take advantage of. A while ago I designed a site for a friend, and even though it never went 'live', and has zero visitors, it was recently hacked. No rhyme, no reason, just because. (And because it was 'vacant', it wasn't monitored enough.)
I prefer to think of these attacks as cockroaches -- they have always existed, and always will, so we take the steps we can to limit their damage. Sometimes we shine a light on them and they'll scurry away, but turn the light off and they're back. So we can plug up holes, use bugbombs etc to minimise their impact, but you won't get rid of them. Getting angry with them is pretty pointless as a long-term solution:)
But this isn't just a web thing. We take a lot of steps to protect our property, most of these steps we don't even think about -- lock your door when you go out, don't leave your stuff lying around, don't give your pin number to anyone... but we've had a long time to develop ways of protecting our stuff, whereas on the web things are newer and changing all the time, so we just have to develop new ways. The cockroaches have always been there, and always will.
By the way, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Flightsim.com was hacked -- there are a hundred different ways in which a site can have problems, so don't assume hacking. I get emails every month from NZFF members asking if the forum has been hacked, as they can't access it, but it is almost always a temporary technical problem. If I can't access NZFF I usually wait a couple of hours, and 9 times out of 10 I get an email from our web hosts apologising for and explaining the outage. (They're good that way.)
Posted:
Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:52 pmby Ian Warren
Today,s world i,m getting to a stage , do not trust any one with more than three computers a cat and many hundreds of areoplane books and within his life,s circle Chickenman really dose not exist ! WHAT !
Posted:
Sat Feb 12, 2011 7:06 pmby deeknow
Rob sums it up nicely, the threat has always been there. I'd just add that the best you can do really is choose a dependable web host, keep your forum (and other scripts) up to date, keep a good eye on any custom scripts you create or edit yourself, make sure permissions are ok, monitor your logs, and backup backup backup !!!
Posted:
Sun Feb 13, 2011 9:52 amby FlyingKiwi
It's working at the moment for me, although my bookmark doesn't work, but if you just type the address in manually it seems to be working fine.
Posted:
Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:15 amby AlisterC
Thanks guys for the insight.
My only real experience with that sort of thing is when I had my own website, and I had a forum installed for family members to use only. Despite being what I would have thought was completely 'off the radar' I had to shut it down due to the amount of spam members joining. So sad really.
Posted:
Mon Feb 14, 2011 10:32 amby steelsporran
 Picked this
handy site up from Austerdriver over at CBFS on this topic.
Personally I go "Is it me or is it Blenheim?" Â
Posted:
Mon Feb 14, 2011 5:05 pmby AlisterC
What a brilliant web link, thank you!
Posted:
Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:42 pmby ZK-MAT
I have sometimes wondered what would happen if "the down for everyone or just me" DNS server messed up, or their site was knocked out ... irony?
...!