Recent STSF Site Issues

[Atragon9 0]

Today, the server that hosts our site was the victim of a DNS attack (making it so that people typing www.stsf.net would not be correctly redirected to the proper IP address and server). This was resolved within an hour and we are, obviously, back up and running.

 

In the past few months, we have also been a victim to some automated "hacking" that led to redirections and attempts to insert Trojan Horse programs onto users' computers. Once again, this was not aimed specifically at STSF, but was part of a wider attack on servers and vulnerable web code. These problems were corrected quickly (thank you, Webby!)

 

After each incident, we take steps to identify the issue and put protections in place to keep them from happening again (this is why we moved to the new version of these message boards before the STSF "branded" version was ready - it's coming soon). Unfortunately, there are always new ways to exploit systems that are open to the Internet. This is why we have had these different incidents recently.

 

We will continue to keep our website as updated and shielded as possible in order to provide everyone a fun and safe Community. Thanks.

[Atragon9 0]

We have experienced further issues yesterday evening, 9/27/06, at 10:00 PM ET and tonight, 9/28/06, at 9:00 PM ET. On the 27th, there was a problem with the web server application running on our server and tonight the server itself experienced a lock-up. These two events do not seem to be related, but Webbie is looking into the system logs and will report back to us once he has a fix on the issues.

 

There may be a need for a scheduled maintenance window on the server soon (i.e., the site will go out of service, but we will do it on purpose). This will not happen during scheduled sim hours and we will announce it ahead of time, on the boards.

 

Thank you.