April 9 - 14 Service Outage and Looking to the Future

Lee · 14th April 2021, 03:51 PM

Please accept my apology for the recent service outage.

I presently believe that an issue with connectivity between the vBulletin programs server and its supporting SQL server generated a large number of emailed error messages on April 8. This set off the spam alarm at the web hosting company and their investigation disclosed a number of malware files scattered widely throughout the file structure and so they locked the site until it was cleaned up. In retrospect, I suspect the email flood and the malware were actually unrelated. A detailed sweep through the file structure was made and a large number of malware files were detected and deleted. I also replaced the vBulletin files from a backup. Unfortunately, the URL of the SQL database had changed in the interval since I made the backup and so, when the hosting company turned the site back on, another error email was generated each time anyone attempted to do anything on the forum and about a thousand such emails were generated over 40 minutes before the spam alarm sounded and the site was locked down again. A second sweep found no recurrent malware and the incorrect parameters were corrected with the correct ones and the site restarted.

How the malware found during that first sweep got there is unresolved. If this were my fault, then it would most likely have been due to my failure to apply updates to the vBulletin program over a period of more than a decade.

I am currently in discussions with vBulletin about updating our installation and possibly moving the forums only to their cloud service where maintenance and updates are managed by vBulletin. If the migration proves feasible, the forums will become vikingsword.org, paving the way for the long term.

Your comments are welcome.

14th April 2021, 03:51 PM	#1
Lee EAAF Staff Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Upstate New York, USA Posts: 913	April 9 - 14 Service Outage and Looking to the Future Please accept my apology for the recent service outage. I presently believe that an issue with connectivity between the vBulletin programs server and its supporting SQL server generated a large number of emailed error messages on April 8. This set off the spam alarm at the web hosting company and their investigation disclosed a number of malware files scattered widely throughout the file structure and so they locked the site until it was cleaned up. In retrospect, I suspect the email flood and the malware were actually unrelated. A detailed sweep through the file structure was made and a large number of malware files were detected and deleted. I also replaced the vBulletin files from a backup. Unfortunately, the URL of the SQL database had changed in the interval since I made the backup and so, when the hosting company turned the site back on, another error email was generated each time anyone attempted to do anything on the forum and about a thousand such emails were generated over 40 minutes before the spam alarm sounded and the site was locked down again. A second sweep found no recurrent malware and the incorrect parameters were corrected with the correct ones and the site restarted. How the malware found during that first sweep got there is unresolved. If this were my fault, then it would most likely have been due to my failure to apply updates to the vBulletin program over a period of more than a decade. I am currently in discussions with vBulletin about updating our installation and possibly moving the forums only to their cloud service where maintenance and updates are managed by vBulletin. If the migration proves feasible, the forums will become vikingsword.org, paving the way for the long term. Your comments are welcome.