Safe Speed Forums

Hi All,

Since early on Christmas Eve someone has been running a denial of service attack on the Safe Speed forums. In principle the idea is to issue so many bogus requests for information from our servers to the point that legimate requests cannot be serviced.

So far the servers have coped admirably with the attack. The Police have been informed and are looking into it. The attack is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act and carries a prison term.

You can see the effect of this attack as the number of "guest" users active on the forums. Presently it's about 20, but it has been as high as 107.

It is possible that this attack will make the forums unavailable for a while. If that happens we have a number of backup plans.

It could be necessary to inform users of changes via the email address registered against your Forum profile. It might be a good time to ensure that your email address is up to date.

I hope you all had a great Christmas day!

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Hi Paul:
I experienced the problem on Friday to the point where I eventually gave up trying to access the forum.
However, it was short lived and everything was back to normal by early on Saturday, and is O-K now, but I have noticed that, despite ticking the box requesting to be 'Logged in each visit' I still have to 'log in' every time (no big deal, but I thought I'd mention it in case others are being affected the same way ?)

I am having problems with my E-Mail, so you may be unable to contact me this way, 'if' that became necessary.
(This is a long standing fault with my server.)

Could it not be related to the "Santy Worm". The forum usess the PhPP software which is the targetted technology


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4117711.stm

I didn't know about that worm. I'll look into it. Thanks.

The pattern (MO?) seems very dissimilar if the BBC article is even remotely correct.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

This is far more likely to be you not accepting cookies. To be logged in automatically the browser has to refer to a cookie on your PC. Typically cookies do no harm.

Think there might be something in this coinidence? From the front page of Pepipoo:

The FightBack forums are now available again following the earlier problem with our hosting service.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

It does seem that this is a characteristic of the Santy Worm. I've upgraded the forum software which is supposed to provide the basic protection required. I would point out that we have NOT been infected by the worm.

See this topic from the PHPBB support forums (if you're interested! ):

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=249922

With regard to the software upgrade, PLEASE report any unusual behaviours of the new software. Everything I've tested is working OK, but then you can't test everything.

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety