NCCC website down on Jan 14, 2013

[karlos]

Some may have noticed that our website was down today, possibly from around 2:30-9:00 pm. I was at work late today (incommunicado in a security vault) and when I emerged at 6:30, Anthony Smith had texted me that he couldn't access the website. Neither could I, although the Forum was up as well as some other goodies (different software controls). A quick call to Technical Support verified some software files which control what you all see had been deleted. They restored everything in about 2 minutes, and I reset passwords and security PINS (to something VERY complicated) to minimize the possibility of it happening again. Our database, which is where the content of all our articles resides, was intact, so no harm there.

Nothing should have changed or been deleted, but please let me know if anything else looks fishy.

This is the first time this has ever happened and the current setup has been in place since 2009. Hope Al Qaeda hasn't figured their way into our club.

Thanks, Anthony!
Karl

[Nerius Landys]

I have faith that nothing bad will happen.

[karlos]

I was notified 10 min before this morning's Sunday ride that our site was down again. I quickly checked before the ride and noticed that the same nefarious hacker, hmei7 had been at work - he always leaves his "calling card." This only affects the main site you see, which is run by Joomla. I have all the latest security updates installed for Joomla, and will try to stay on top of things. This is mostly an annoyance, but if the timing isn't right, the NCCC site can be down for too long. I fear it was down for most of today as both Nerius and Ron Medak pointed it out to me at 7am and I wasn't able to put my full attention onto it until just now (7:30 pm).

Ursula thought it was "user error" (we understand that), but, please, don't hesitate to even ring me on my cell (from the published roster) as I like to know when problems like this occur immediately. They are usually easy to resolve, and I have complete backups of everything as does our web host.

Sorry for any inconvenience