Affiliate Manager Forum Hacked & Destroyed

I just did a long blog about this, on my blog (below) but thought I would share a bit here as well.

Affiliate Manager, the best private industry forum and the ONLY real forum exclusively for affiliate managers was hacked and destroyed. Shawn built that manager community and it has become a primary information source for affiliate managers and service providers. Visiting that forum was a vital part of our daily routine and the loss of 2 years of valuable insight and posts is just, well… hard to even imagine someone could do this.

He's offering a $5,000 reward to anyone that can catch the perps.
Damn Hackers!!!

Once again, shows the value of a BACKUP.

Did he "forget" to update his forum software?

I assume he had a back up but could not restore it or is still working on recovering it. He was using PHPBB which is a hacker's dream and I suggested he use Vbulletin for the next version.

My partner had a PHPBB forum that we were just getting ready to launch back in Feb. It got hacked before we even went live. So now we are re-doing the whole forum with Vbulletin software which does not have as many securitiy issues.

"One is reminded of Harry Limes famous quip in the movie The Third Man — that 30 years of noisy, violent churning under the Borgias in Italy produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissa"

From the chaos will return an even better community. All those changes he may have been thinking of implementing can now be done. The short-term pain and anguish may result in long-term positive results.

Cygnus

I feel his and your pain.

I helped build a community for a friend. It was doing so well. And then bam. We were hacked. Since then we have moved to vbulletin.

I managed to contact the hacker a few weeks later. Turns out he has stopped hacking cause his girlfriend told me to. He really annoys me, acting all innocent about the whole thing. Oh well.

- Matt

I've been hacked using vBulletin over and over!!! It's a pain to start all over and over and over. Yet the boards never die or get less populer after they get destroied. It's like the visitors suddenly try to flood the boards with posts to keep it from looking dead.

(Yes, I've been back-uping, since the first hack, a DOS attack on a government site.)

I have two phpbb forums and touch wood haven't been hacked. I always take weekly backups of all files on my website and forum. Really helps being a member of phpbbhacks.com and regulary checking in there, so you are aware of any security updates as and when they are released.

backups are guuuudddddd mmmm hmmmm

Heh. Course I just reinstalled XP because I didn't have a backup - /thwap Geoffrey

G-Man

Lol G-man!

Guess we've all learned the hard way about back-ups.

The forum is back up now on Invision Power Board instead of PHPBB. All old posts are gone put people seem more eager than ever to post. Think they missed it.

Cool trick then: hack your own stuff (in a big way), get some exposure and away you go.

Of course I'm not implying that this was the case here but it can be useful as a "second lesson learned" - albeit an evil one

Hee you must be "Jelling."

Hack like this?
http://www.totalillusions.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=328&st=0

ROFL-NWMP - Mano, if any hacker ever asks for my IP, I hope I can remember that one