What happened?

[RobotMonkeyHead]

Well, this has been fun.  First off I'd like to apologize to everyone for the down time.  And for the 2 weeks of forum content we've lost.  

Gui and Waefu, I'm sorry about bambi's mother.  Both of them.  2 fawns down 2 standing.  Gear up for some payback fellas, fawns don't go out like no bitch!

To everyone else who's last 2 weeks of discussion and hard work got thwomped by this damned spam bot, I'm sorry.  We tried everything we possibly could.  So many tutorials I could code our database from scratch, and tech support probably recognizes my number on their caller id at this point, if I'm not in their contacts already.

We got hit with a spam bot that inflated one of our old databases up to an enormous 12m and despite all the best efforts of Alexei, Ryon and myself we were unable to salvage anything after October 4th.  It was no one's fault, ultimately (other than the source of that bot's) it's just been staff attempting damage control, trying to save those 2 weeks worth of posts / content.  Unfortunately it didn't work in the end.  

Going forward from here, theoretically this should be the last time anything like this happens.  I'm currently working on automating regular backups of the entire forum.  Nightly backups for up to a week, weekly backups for up to a month, and monthly backups for up to a year. Rather than relying on our hosting services back up and restore capabilities.  We'll also have about 4 anti-spam plugins running from here on out.

Thank you, to all of you for sticking around and coming back after all this.  Again I'm so sorry for everything lost.  It was a pretty hard hit, But we're back up and running and we will recover and rebuild!

[White Ranger]

@RobotMonkeyHæd How did this site get a spam bot? 

 

Other then that, excellent job guys :D

[RobotMonkeyHead]

It actually got into an old obsolete database, which wound up causing the site to shut down from sheer size.  That database was one staff used to use years ago to host images for our collections via a gallery feature.  At the time, bots began accessing the gallery somehow, so the feature was removed for security.  However one of the bots may have continued doing it's thing that entire time, or recently reactivated somehow, we don't know specifically.  

And thanks :) 

[White Ranger]

@RobotMonkeyHæd Glad it didn't do anything too severe, although I would like to point out that, we're missing the spoiler button :p

 

No need to rush, as obviously the site just got back, so please by all means please take your time. 

 

2016 has definitely been a rough year for MFFA, but I'm sure it will only get better from this point on. 

[RicePigeon]

And I was just about to ask Alexei if it was okay to make these details about the databases available to the public, but it seems RMH was already way ahead of me lol.

 

From what he told me though, it sounded like the database that was affected was one from MFFA's old web host from 3 years ago, which Ryon apparently forgot about after the site's hosting changed around that time?

[Laharl]

a bot got in somewhere thats for sure. It sucks we lost 2 weeks of content the main thing that really hurts us here is the news. we lost a good deal of news cause of this. Hopefully someone can repost all of that...

[DLF]

Ive lost some of my content after that. But its OK.

[Jirobou]

First time I hear about a spam bot that can take down a website.

[Jirobou]

ugh! sorry but I just posted once the site is still bugged

[White Ranger]

Strange, I can't view my or anyone profile.

[DS12]

My profile used to have 9 coummunity reputations now it went down to 3. What's going on? The content I posted was lost as well....

[DS12]

I can't view my profile for some reason......

[RobotMonkeyHead]

Apparently we aren't out of hot water yet.  
Trying to fix this right now.

[Ryon]

just upgrade the forum. at this point, its probably old and current plug in's fighting each other.

[Demitri]

i thought hte forum got upgraded last time?

 

yeah just be safe

[Noside]

For some strange reason, my thread in Mugen Help was deleted... ugghh.  

[TheRedBeast]

bot attack huh?...thats suspices 

[RobotMonkeyHead]

3 hours ago, Ryon said:

just upgrade the forum. at this point, its probably old and current plug in's fighting each other.

Upgraded, database repaired and optimized.  I think the recent errors are a combination of what you're describing and that IPS upgrade kicking over.

 @Noside sorry man, that sucks.

Just to expand on the bot issue a little bit, it did so by effecting one of our older out of use databases, which had had bot problems in the past.  We think one of them has either been going this whole time, or was reactivated somehow, so recently that database started getting bigger and bigger in the background.  Bigger than anything the tech support guy had ever seen in his life.  Me and him had a good laugh about just how enormous it had gotten.  Something like 6 times our allowed hosting space I think?  No one noticed it quickly because we don't use that database anymore.  We just kept it for the images in it.  I hope this clears up the bot issue a little more. 

[Galvatron]

Woah! i that messed up, :-(

 

but as you said RMH we can rebuild from what we lost. As long we have a strong community we can regain looking forward. :-)

[Ryon]

So it seems were all good for now.

[RobotMonkeyHead]

Most of the glitches seem to be working themselves out.

Some of the images in the collections that were hosted on photobucket aren't showing up still.

[Ryon]

those could have been from the PIWIGO.

[Galvatron]

59 minutes ago, RobotMonkeyHæd said:

Most of the glitches seem to be working themselves out.

Cool! like the forum has a mind of its own........ then again.....  

1 hour ago, RobotMonkeyHæd said:

Some of the images in the collections that were hosted on photobucket aren't showing up still.

Hmm.. that strange the collections i made don't have that problem.... :-P

[Mister Fael]

3 hours ago, RobotMonkeyHæd said:

Some of the images in the collections that were hosted on photobucket aren't showing up still.

 

It's a problem within photobucket itself, sometimes, the images becomes unavaliable for no reason.

[Skorp Vybez]

Just glad to see that everything is ok again. I kinda missed you guys here in MFFA! Haha