Damn hackers with nothing better to do with their time! I found out today that my phpBB forums were hacked again. The last and first time they were hacked was back in December. They were struck by the NeverEverSanity worm which primarily defaced the web pages in the forum. This time, it was something different as phpBB couldn’t seem to make the proper calls to the database.

I’m good with backups, so I was able to restore things. But this was not without some hiccups. My backup file was too large to import using phpMyAdmin which has a really lame 2MB import max. That’s retarded! So I hunted around and found a nice OS X front-end interface to MySQL called CocoaMySQL which had no problems importing files over 2MB. It’s a native OS X app so it’s got a nice interface and is more responsive than phpMyAdmin so I think I’ll be ditching phpMyAdmin for CocoaMySQL.

If these hacks keep up, I may have to just get rid of the forums. I implemented them originally as a fun way for people to comment on trip reports and pictures. Unfortunately, it was never an ideal solution because it was not a direct commenting system - users had to visit the forums separately to comment - so as a result, the forums were hardly used. They did, however, turn out to be extremely useful as a discussion tool for the Uber Rack/Uber Creations startup, but now that that venture has ended, there is virtually no use for the forums anymore.

When RohJuh.com V4 launches, it will implement a direct commenting system for both trip/event reports as well as individual pictures. As a result, the forums will have no real reason for being. I could just delete them and not have to worry about keeping up with phpBB security updates, but for archival reasons, I’d like to keep them around. So I’ve gone in and disabled the ability for anyone to post anything. Hopefully, this will close any possible entry-ways for would-be hackers (fingers crossed), but if it doesn’t and the forums become too much of a chore to maintain, I’ll probably have to get rid of them. I’m optimistic, however, that closing the forums off will be sufficient, but only time will tell.

Posted by Roger at 6:51 pm.