Hacked? No, not the SH Forums. BUT: Compromised Staff Account!

One of the staff member accounts was compromised early this morning, thereby granting access to Steve's account to send out tens of thousands of private conversations. As a secondary result, the mass amount of email sent from our servers got us flagged as "spammers," and our web host locked the account down as a security breach.

We apologize for the inconvenience and the intrusion.


Important! The forum itself was not compromised. Only two staff member accounts. Rest assured, the forum software and the server are still safe, as they have been in the past.

This is a strong reminder to 1) use a very secure random password* and 2) enable two-factor authentication (called "two-step verification" here in the forum) in order to secure your account properly.

We've had other changes in the works for a few months now, and they are expected to go live in the very near future. We will make the appropriate announcements when ready. We also have ongoing work on the forum that may cause a few minor disruptions as we prepare for the future.

Thank you!

* A safe random password uses no names, no words, no combination of those with numbers, or anything else easily guessed. Your browser may offer a secure password generator built in, such as the one available in Chrome:



Or you can find a random password generator online easily. ​

 

Good job to all for resolving this and getting the site backup. Impressive and a cold round of brews to the admins and gorts!

 

Thank you dear friends!!!

 

I knew something was up when I had an alert at 4:30 AM that said, "hahahahahahahahhaahahahahahahahahaha no 2fa be going crazy here." Anyone else get one?

 

Yeah I did think this was odd!

 

Yes, me.

 

FYI... at 5:34 PM, I still had this in my alerts:

 

Thank you very much for the information. I can imagine all the hard work it must have taken to work things out & really appreciate it. Thank you.

 

Yeah I got that

I got this weird one too !!

 

I got the same gibberish

 

Thanks all. Glad you were able to figure this out. Two-factor verification now enabled!

 

Well I was wondering and suddenly i the afternoon "no access". Had some real bad moments.
Whether it was the "Whitehouse Gang" or some Gremlins great everything is fixed again.
best
Jazzcorder

 

So the guy hacked into the site just to do that? Or was he trying to get everyone's email passwords?

 

*raises hand*

 

I was confused by that alert and still could not translate it, as thought Steve was just ‘Speaking in Tongues’.

 

h

Me too. I thought it was a different style to his normal style. I thought he'd had 1 too many alcoholic drinks or he was very tired or his eyes were playing him up. (I know my English goes funny when I'm due for new spectacles.)

 

Yes. I tried to alert the staff but my message failed.

 

Weird and wacky but not wonderful.
Thanks for your efforts.

 

I got this as well. I’ve had a few testy replies to my inquiries before, but thought this was a bit extreme. Then I learned about what happened.

 

Well... that DOES kind of sound like Steve though... or maybe a bit more Gary...

No, seriously, thanks kindly gentlemen for getting right on this!

 

Steve's coffee moment?

 

And here I felt special that Steve Hoffman sent me a personal message .

Good job by all the mods for getting the page back up and working again.

 

Maybe he'd have needed a coffee if it had been him or would it have been too latte? Lol. :0)

 

How?