Missing posts

[Cybus]

Is there no possiblity of these missing posts being retrived ?

Tell it like it is.

[Adam Davies]

Hi
I'm afraid that they have.
Blame the hackers who seem intent on causing disruption.Here's a press release that we put out in October regarding the same problem

LEADING ONLINE COMMUNITY PLAGUED BY SOPHISTICATED HACKING CAMPAIGN (IVA.co.uk)



- IVAs continue to be a hot topic as sustained hacking attempts fail to bring down the UKs leading IVA forum -



(London 17/10/07) As the UKs biggest online IVA community sustains yet another hacking attempt – one of ten hacking attempts and virus attacks on the IVA.co.uk website in just over 8 months – it begs the question; who would want to silence a free debt advice forum about IVAs?

Attacks ranging from SYN flood, teardrop attack, IRC flooding, and various other DOS attacks have necessitated multiple upgrades of the firewall and server architecture as the websites admin team has fought to keep the forum up and running. Attacks seem to have been timed to bring down the site at times of extreme traffic, for instance coinciding with the busy run up to IVA.co.uks popular debt evenings.

IVA.co.uk are currently considering legal action against those responsible for the attacks, having monitored the IP addresses of some of the less sophisticated and thus traceable hacking attempts. Though it is difficult to fathom who might want to bring the popular site down, it is not the first time that the question has been raised; previously accusations of slanderous forum posts have threatened to tarnish the sites reputation. The site is an open and informal environment where members are encouraged to express their opinions on the personal debt situation in the country, but this is obviously proving to be unsettling for some.

Despite these attempts to stop the site, IVA.co.uk has continued to grow from strength to strength and remains the UKs largest online IVA community for personal debt information and advice about Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs). Membership of the forum has grown by 100% in 6 months, blogs have grown from 4 to 25 in 6 months and traffic has surged by 500% since last year.

The IVA.co.uk admin team are bracing themselves for further attacks that may be timed for the upcoming IVA.co.uk Debt Education Debate on the 24th October. This industry debate is bringing together creditors, debtors and industry professionals to discuss topical issues surrounding debt education and the record level of personal debt in Britain.

Andy Davie, site spokesperson, comments that: “The site is a friendly and relaxed place where members can share their thoughts about personal debt with others, and this is obviously proving unpopular with some people. Community 121 runs a lot of really popular community sites, such as www.allotments-uk.com, and yet they have had nothing like the number of hacking attempts that IVA.co.uk has suffered. We might not know why we are being targeted, but we are determined to stop it”.




Andy Davie
IVA.co.uk Spokesperson and Website Manager

About me:
http://www.iva.co.uk/andy_davie_profile.asp

IVA Helpline: 0800 197 4838
http://www.iva.co.uk/iva_helpline.asp

[Cybus]

I never gave it two thoughts until tonight, but when I clicked I visited the site and was posting last night, I noticed that I did not actually have 'The IVA Forum' showing on my tab at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately I do not retain a history of the sites I have visited and cannot recall what was appearing in my tab either.
I wonder if there is anyway of retrieving some of the posts from the Temporary Internet files ? If memory serves me corretly, Windows retains a copy of each page visited in a cache on our PC's
I used to be able to find these quite easily on Windows 98SE, but I don't know how to find them on XP.
It's a long shot.
Doesn't the forum get backed up at regular intervals? It seems a lot to have lost and in terms of my own posts, I can find nothing after 24 November 2007. It's not just a couple of days that have gone missing as is stated above.

Tell it like it is.

[couple31]

To be fair, classic asp that this site uses for the forum is a fairly old scripting language now having been replaced around 2001

Might be worth moving to a more modern and secure message board format? A lot of the PHP based boards such as fusion or Invision have good reputations for security (PhpBB excepted!)

Appreciate that takes time and money though with the volume of posts stored and again I don't have personal experience of how secure the Snitz board is

[olympic_torch]

How very strange.
Who could benefit from something like that.

Get Malcolm, the computer whiz from 'Spooks',
he would find them!.

Aucto Splendore Resurgo.
(7 down, 53 to go)

[cat 1]

Morning.Can I be very thick and ask...if hackers do what they do and dusrupt the site. Can they collect our personal contact details and is there more risk the site wil be 'infected' and my pc will get 'ill'(i'm no good with computers. Did you guess yet?) Do I need to do anything as a precaution as sad as it may be, this site has been so good for me I would hate to loose it and panicked when things went wrong the other night. Cat

[johnz]

If you have good antivirus, etc, then you should be perfectly safe. I ran a virus scan afterwards just to be safe, as I was using my internet banking at the same time, and all it found was some cookies that it removed immediately. But they probably came from facebook, so I'm not particularly worried.

Investing in good protection for your pc may cost some money, but protecting yourselves and others (cos you can forward on any viruses) makes it good value for money. I use McAffee and it costs of £28.00 per year. Ohhh, that reminds me. I'll have to update my details before my renewal cos they take the money from my old bank account. Doh!![:D]

Johnz

[mikebdomain]

Couple31 The problems of using anything MS as a web server….. I have been running a couple of popular PhpBB2 club sites for a number of years and have only suffered two major attacks, both thwarted by security updates by the developers. The main problem suffered is spammers....

I have to congratulate iva.co.uk and their technical team for managing to keep the forum online during these obvious attempts at bringing the site down. Have the attacks been reported to the police? I have found their special technical unit a great help.


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[neil277]

Hi

It must be another I.V.A Company i feel this is the best site on the internet.

Regards.

Neil

[Adam Davies]

Hi
Your on my Xmas card list Neil
Thanks

Andy Davie
IVA.co.uk Spokesperson and Website Manager

About me:
http://www.iva.co.uk/andy_davie_profile.asp

IVA Helpline: 0800 197 4838
http://www.iva.co.uk/iva_helpline.asp

[lily]

cybus avatar really made me laugh, I am still laughing, dont even know why, I am in a stupid mood. Its just tickled me.

lily