Tanker

Welcome! We have ALL been 'victim' to the score of a larger tank than intended... The site is a lot quieter in the last few years than in the past but that seems to be the direction forums have moved, in general. The site is an absolute treasure of knowledge and we have worked hard to keep the membership bot-free so I hope that you can find value in the Search button and countless hours seeing what others have done.

I've checked and you are WAY under your limit... so I sent a test message... see if you have it? And thanks for being so patient waiting for me to see this post! whoops...

What is it that is prompting the question? The site has a new member joining every few days, which is a drop from the 'glory days' a decade ago when there was 2-3 per day, but that's typical with this media. I still check for new members daily (ok, sometimes it's 2 days, but I have a LOT going on) and right now there are 3 people in the queue who have registered but not accepted the response email (it's almost always Hotmail and Gmail users and it's always in the Junk) but otherwise anyone who wants to be here, is. I will say that one 'plus' to the lower activity here is we have not seen a good flame war in years...

Hello AA! I have completed a major upgrade to the forum software, and it's looking like it's running fairly smoothly in the first few hours. Please let me know if you notice anything acting strangely, or if something is just not working at all. Private Message is usually best, but if that system goes down then email me at aa@albertaaquatica.com and I'll get things rolling. Some things WILL be different, and most of it is intentional... and No, I cannot revert the system back because you don't like it. hahaha

Technically... neither. It's an issue that crept into the hosting server through what I believe to be a vulnerability in our previous banner software. It's a replicating virus that I am continuing to battle - quite literally as we speak at this very moment! The host says it's my problem to deal with since I 'allowed' the security hole, the banner software people say it's not their problem because the little virus is not actually messing with their software and Invision says it's not their problem because it's not their server... even though the virus is changing the code in one of the Invision files every 48 hours or so. So at this point I have basically stripped AA down to the bare bones, wiped and reinstalled everything from 'fresh' files and have gone through each and every folder so many times looking for replications I'm dizzy. I've found more then 300 files now, and it's exhausting. This virus is not 'supposed' to replicate... I'm supposed to have found the changed file, find the file that changes the file, and eradicate them both... but this is a 'new' variant... it's being difficult. And there's no real option for me to run an 'antivirus' on the server. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve to try, and have just made some changes that I hope will stop it. Time will tell! If nothing else works I'll just back up the database, and move our hosting to a fresh server and reinstall everything from scratch. While the database uploads (takes a couple hours!) I can go through the uploads folders and make sure that's clean since it would be the only thing retained other than the posts/messages/users. Fun, huh?? Glad I have a full time business to run during the day - otherwise I might be bored.

Yeah... just rescanned and found that there's one little PITA file that creeped back in... off I go to scour the %&*(*%#@ server again... Sigh.

I got a screen shot of the issue in my PM box so I will use a couple different combinations of product and browser and see what I can duplicate. Regrettably the only thing I don't own in an iPad but my wife does have a ton of iPhone stuff I can borrow for testing. If anyone else has this issue please tell me what kind of device you're using and what browser. Thanks.

Sorry, I'm not seeing an issue on my screen. Please take a screen shot of the problem with your Snipping Tool (included on every Version of Windows since 7) and post the picture so I can see?

ok that's enough 'fun' for me for one night... just went back through every directory on the server again...

This is a test topic to see if this will work. or error out... this blankity blank blank bug/hack/server issue we're having is REALLY driving me nuts!!

Testing. Cool...

Fixed. We keep getting little 'bugs' creeping up and I've made every change I can to stop them but someone out there is having a LOT of fun seeing what kind of injection they can get away with on Invision software and unfortunately I can't do much except wait for them to attack and then run around looking under all the furniture to find the changed file... I have reported the instance to Invision and hopefully they can patch up the hole.

Yeah I just found another location on the server the injected code was hiding in, and tore it out of there... I have gone through every directory now and have made notes on the changed files and where they are, etc... so I will continue to check the entire directory every 24 hours for the next few nights and see if we get a file changed again. I had already reset all the passwords, etc to access the server so once I get the last remnants of the attack off the server we'll be good again. This was ONLY a 'server code' attack, and NOT a database or content attack... no information about AA members/passwords/emails/etc was compromised as the database is on a completely different access. All this malware does is send you to a different website once in a while when you are flagged as 'new to the site' ie. coming from a search engine, etc. That's why typically using links, favourites, or bookmarks should not affect you. In the 11 years I have been handling this site this is by far the worst thing that's happened here and frankly, it could be SO much worse!! We're truly blessed! hahah

OK. I wiped the ENTIRE site and restarted from scratch... there's little things here and there I need to 'retweak' back but let's see what happens...

Grrrrrr......