currently online section broke?

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bscofield
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currently online section broke?

Post by bscofield »

hmmm... am I the only that is having trouble with the currently online section??

I always see 0 now-a-days. Normal I would have at least seen myself on there...
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AAdomeit
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Post by AAdomeit »

No, you're not the only one....I see a search bot from the states in the Forums section, but I'm not here..... Hmmmm.
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Paul_Tatum
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Post by Paul_Tatum »

Same here, I was working on getting my state flag working and was wondering what happened.
I also am showing Currently online 1, Members 0, Guests 0

what the heck are search bots anyway, just out of curiosity.

Paul
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AAdomeit
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Post by AAdomeit »

Not sure - my theory is that search bots are programs that work on a passive basis (users are active) searching for a line of coding that contains the information the 'bot is programmed to find....Often used by law agencies to find nasty, nasty things. I imagine we're safe of that on this site!
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KurtHuhn
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Post by KurtHuhn »

Search bots are what index the material on websites for search engines. Everything you see there is a search engine's robot (or spider) going throught the site, catloging the info, and creating a keyword or ideas index for when someone puts an appropriate search string in.
Kurt Huhn
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Tyler
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Post by Tyler »

Thanks for the heads up guys!

I'm not sure what is going on, but I know that there is a very mean virus out right now that targets sites like this one. Someone tried to hack the site yesterday, in fact, but my security caught them. I don't know if this is coincidental, but I have eliminated the two scripts that are acting strange.

I'm heading out of town for a few days...hopefully the site will still be up when I get back! 8O

Tyler
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KurtHuhn
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Post by KurtHuhn »

Yup, it's a worm that targets PHPbb specifically. If PHPbb is used on a website anyhere, the entire site is vulnerable to attack from this worm. What it will do is use the vulnerability of PHPbb to gain access to the rest of the system and deface the main page as well as propogate itself to other systems running PHPbb.

I don't know if the PHPbb inclued with PHPNuke is vulnerable or not, but more information can be found at SANS, as as well how you can reduce your vulnerability.
Kurt Huhn
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bscofield
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Post by bscofield »

How is the worm propagating itself? Normaly the fixes for such things are not so slow in coming... What's the vulnerability? Normaly you find the door and you close the door. Unless it's like a memory buffer which has to be changed in a few thousand places they are usually somewhat easy to deal with. Is that the what we owe the error to that I get every once in a while when trying to access the site? I can't remember the exact error but when I get it usually cps is down too.
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KurtHuhn
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Post by KurtHuhn »

Check out SANS for the lowdown. I won't rehash it here since those good folks have already spent considerable time writing up the details.
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2004-12-21
Kurt Huhn
AKA: Oversized Ostrogoth
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