Simple Machines Forums attacks

[Clara Listensprechen]

I see. Part of the problem is that I'm the only member and have no new registrants. Not really seeking any, I was just test-driving the service and version is all.

[petabyte]

* billy2 thinks Arantor should be knighted for his efforts

+1

plus another one!

[Aoife]

* billy2 thinks Arantor should be knighted for his efforts

+1

plus another one!

(following the system used on wow gaming addon dev sites)
+3

[ACAMS]

Actually Arantor is the only one here that consistently helps, and only 2-3 more that sporadically offer help.
Unfortunately, there are only 3-4 people left around here that actually can help with "real" problems.
I am too old to learn, and it seems every time I learn something it makes me forget something else, and unfortunately sometimes it is something important........ so I doubt I will ever be of much help.

[Road Rash Jr.]

I am too old to learn, and it seems every time I learn something it makes me forget something else, and unfortunately sometimes it is something important........ so I doubt I will ever be of much help.

I have that issue, in fact the other day I was at the doctors suspecting I have alzimers because I keep forgetting to pull my zipper up. He tells me not to worry, alzimers is forgetting to pull it down.

[Aoife]

Sudden massive increase in numbers of IP addresses we've banned and/or are coming up as blocked by httpBL or Bad Behavior mods. They can't get thru our defenses but the sudden jump in numbers is kinda scary. Anyone else experiencing this on their forums?  This just started happening in the last hour or less....

[busterone]

I have had 56 bots turned away today by httpBL, but they were all mainly just viewing /index.php. They were not attempting to log in or register. That is just a small number higher than normal. I usually see 2 to 3 dozen a day anyway.

[butchs]

They have been doing it for over a year now.  Every now and then they will increase their efforts.  You never noticed them before.  Nothing to worry about.   

[busterone]

Indeed. they have been knocking at the front door (and looking for a back door) for a very long time. 

[qtime]

I like to see such scripts, to brute force, it will help us to make a protection.

Please send me a PM to communicate about that.

It's smart to not try 1 user with many passes, because that is blocked fast with security login, using all kind of membernames and using many proxies is not easy to block.

For now we use proxy blocker, that will help us out, but some faithful members cannot enter our community now

[CapadY]

Actually Arantor is the only one here that consistently helps, and only 2-3 more that sporadically offer help.
Unfortunately, there are only 3-4 people left around here that actually can help with "real" problems.
I am too old to learn, and it seems every time I learn something it makes me forget something else, and unfortunately sometimes it is something important........ so I doubt I will ever be of much help.

As a matter of fact, some support members have a full time job, a family, have to do a household, have to shop some times and yes, sometimes there is even a family member in the hospital.
Though, the very little time left for this people is spend to help others on the SMF forum.

If you can only appreciate helpers that are fulltime available to you, just tell it and I will leave the support team.

[qtime]

Actually Arantor is the only one here that consistently helps, and only 2-3 more that sporadically offer help.
Unfortunately, there are only 3-4 people left around here that actually can help with "real" problems.
I am too old to learn, and it seems every time I learn something it makes me forget something else, and unfortunately sometimes it is something important........ so I doubt I will ever be of much help.

As a matter of fact, some support members have a full time job, a family, have to do a household, have to shop some times and yes, sometimes there is even a family member in the hospital.
Though, the very little time left for this people is spend to help others on the SMF forum.

If you can only appreciate helpers that are fulltime available to you, just tell it and I will leave the support team.

I only read an opinion from ACAMS, I wish you strength with your family who is in hospital.

[Arantor]

What you should be aware, though, is that the team thoroughly encourages taking time out for real life, putting real life first, and one of the many things I've been party to in the past is the simple fact that: if you don't have time to help out under a team position, you probably should hand that badge in. That way there's no false expectations, no misunderstandings and so on. There are more than a few people I have previously pointed in that direction, too - if you're so busy you can't commit a reasonable amount of time to the responsibility you've taken, you probably should stop. Life's hectic, it gets on top of us, and even if I hadn't quit last year due to the frustration of people not doing their fair share, I would have quit shortly after due to personal circumstances changing.

There is a point here, amid the frustrations on both sides, though, specifically relating to the fact that there are too precious few people that help out with the skills to fix some of the problems that come along. Yes, there will always be the general level problems, and I think I can speak for the team in recognising and thanking those that contribute their time in fixing those problems, under the sorts of categories of 'where's option x' or 'how do I...'

What ACAMS is getting at is that for anything more advanced than that, there is a real shortage of people with the technical skills, the time, energy etc to sit and get involved in helping people. I'm doing that mostly to assess whether things are bugs or not.

[Suki]

Actually Arantor is the only one here that consistently helps, and only 2-3 more that sporadically offer help.
Unfortunately, there are only 3-4 people left around here that actually can help with "real" problems.
I am too old to learn, and it seems every time I learn something it makes me forget something else, and unfortunately sometimes it is something important........ so I doubt I will ever be of much help.

yay for another user complaining...


instead of finger pointing   you should really see the efforts  of some users who actually wanna learn in order to provide quality support...


to say "there's only a few people  who can actually help"   is very demotivating for me,  why should I keep spending quite a few hours learning the inners of SMF, learning php and such  if people doesn't give a damn about it...   if people think only a few can help and the others are just a mere accessory  or something...   this really piss me off...   here Am I, trying to help as much as I can, given my best and constantly trying to exceed my limits... and for what?  just for be dismiss...   hey! bring the guy with a programming background over here,  he's the only guy who can help me  with my "real issue"...


some of us haven't studied a  computer science career or similar,  some of us are just regular people with jobs and lives that aren't remotely related to coding or programming...  yet we do our best...   I guest that's  just  isn't enough for some people...


lastly,  and this is just me   when I  see something  wrong, instead of complaining  I go ahead and do something about it...

[Arantor]

to say "there's only a few people  who can actually help"   is very demotivating for me

It's not meant to be demotivating, it's actually a badly attempted goad to get more people to help. Except that what it ends up being is an observation that there is a skills shortage. You're one of the few people who I've consistently noticed trying to help and learning from the experience.

if people think only a few can help

The problem that occurs here is some people have issues that do require specific knowledge to fix, and most people don't. So sometimes it needs someone with much more experience to get involved. Trouble is, ACAMS seems to have been one of those unfortunate cases where more specialist knowledge was needed, where not many people could solve the problem, regardless of anything else.

hey! bring the guy with a programming background over here,  he's the only guy who can help me  with my "real issue"...

Yeah, there are some issues like that. They are the exception rather than the rule, though.

I guest that's  just  isn't enough for some people...

That's the sad fact, though, for a number of people here, it's not good enough, it seems, because they seem to expect professional (paid) quality dedicated support, because they forget that the people here are volunteers doing it in their spare time.

[Bolt™]

I had a problem like this one time, all I did about it was place a solid IP range ban on IP's starting with 222 for a week then after that week I did not have a problem.

But I do have Forum Firewall and Bad Behavior which block a lot of spamer's, bots, fake IP's and hackers.

Thanks anyway for this post.

[LibertyPrime]

The attackers have managed to pretty much knock a forum I'm a member on out completely.  I get the following message when I try to access the site:

Connection Problems
Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

The site: neoncafe.co.cc [nofollow]

[Arantor]

There are all sorts of reasons why that message can come up, and not entirely related to being attacked. Probably should open a support topic in the relevant support board for further help.

[xrunner]

Connection Problems
Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

I get that message from time to time over the years, I don't consider it a big problem (but an annoyance though).

[LibertyPrime]

I'm beginning to think it may be connected to the attacks because it has almost never happened before to the forum that I'm a member on, and now it's happening.