Virus?

[Timothy]

Shouldn't it be Deny?

[Ian Melville]

I thought that as well, but if you select Deny, you cannot enter the website to block. I tried it just in case and was unable to access any internet at all. The way I now read it is that I have Enabled the filter, allowed internet access all days, 24hrs, but blocked just the one site.

[peterh337]

What I cannot understand is why, when a forum gets infected, nobody is told anything about it. All that happens is that somebody (with decent protection) detects it and starts a thread about it, which is either in an obscure place or gets moved there.

What should happen is that the sysadmin should FIX the issue and post a public message saying such and such happened, it has been fixed, and to check your PC for infection you can use Tools X Y Z.

Flyer.co.uk is not the only pilot forum doing this following an infection, BTW.

The most frequent problem is links to sites that have been hacked

Or the advertising feeds, which IME are what gets hacked quite often.

[Keef]

The problem is, Peter, that a fair number of forumites like to have links at the foot of their posts. Even you!

Some of the links in signatures on the forum have mischief aforethought (I've removed three of them today) - but it's not obvious when you see an innocent-looking link.

It's a sad fact that there is a major global hacking industry. PCs with proper protection may balk at an infected site, but they should not be infected by it. "Threat detected" is a common alert on my PC; virus infection is not.

[peterh337]

Sure, but normally a browser isn't going to load a straight link. You have to click on it.

This used to be a huge issue with email client vulnerability, with default settings of Outl$$k loading external links from emails

Obviously, if one clicks on links without a thought, then one's PC will last about as long as the average teenager's PC

I don't think it is these fixed links that get you. And if people do click on them, they can hardly blame Flyer for what happens.

Historically, forums that got infected got it either via advert feeds (whose server got hacked) or the actual forum server got hacked.

I am no HTML expert but the advert feeds seem to use some kind of 3rd party link, so Flyer has no control over what is served. This is presumably done that way so that the Flyer server doesn't have to serve the gigabytes of advert graphics - same reason why pictures posted here have to be externally hosted.

But this is also why it is also usually easy to block advert feeds, with a browser plug-in, because they are not coming from the flyer.co.uk domain. If adverts were served from flyer.co.uk they would be virtually impossible (AFAIK) to block because they would be indistinguishable from the forum page. For example I don't see any adverts on flyer.co.uk - except the Flyer magazine advert on the left bar.

If the forum server gets hacked then it's game over, but if I was running it I would shut it down as soon as I found out about it, so one limits how many peoples' PCs get quietly trashed.

Some of the links in signatures on the forum have mischief aforethought (I've removed three of them today)

Do you mean that established posters here have set up links to sites which are infected? What kinds of sites were they?

[Keef]

Indeed, Peter.

People see links, they click on them. So if there is a link in a signature, the admins check it. The vast majority are harmless (albeit sometimes cheeky); the odd few are not. Today, I found three: that's unusual.

[tech guy]

Hi all,

We are currently working on permanent solutions for all of the issues described.

As our presence on the internet increases, so does the unwanted attention from hackers, spammers etc. As you can appreciate, it is a constant battle to keep ahead of these people.

Rest assured that the mods, Ian and myself are committed to providing you the best possible experience on this site.

Thanks

Liam

[jollyrog]

All my adverts have returned, so this must mean Orion is a thing of the past.

[Straight'n'Level]

All my adverts have returned, so this must mean Orion is a thing of the past.

Adverts are now being served from http://www.flyer-ads.co.uk but I am still getting intermittent long delays waiting to connect to the new server.

[Skyhawk-N]

.

[David Viewing]

I'm getting this each time I log in.



Is it me, or the site? I don't get any other virus warnings.