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simmerhead

Official Prepar3D-forums hacked?

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All categories in the forums have the same spam post called "contact email...". Are LM under attack?

 

 


Simmerhead - Making the virtual skies unsafe since 1987! 

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Not the first time.

 

Kind regards, Michael


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The LM forum is regularly flooded by spams. Its weird to see a major defence contractor forum so poorly defended. Better have a working, up to date and efficient real time antivirus when you go there. You see the spam posts, a minor annoyance, I hope that there is not more that one doesn't see.


Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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The LM forum is regularly flooded by spams. Its weird to see a major defence contractor forum so poorly defended. Better have a working, up to date and efficient real time antivirus when you go there. You see the spam posts, a minor annoyance, I hope that there is not more that one doesn't see.

 

Not a virus, just people registering and spamming the sight. They need more active moderators to control that. 

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Its weird to see a major defence contractor forum so poorly defended.

 

It's almost impossible these days to defend against an attacker if the person or persons wants to target your website. Just ask cyber-crime expert and author Brian Krebs. He's ticked off so many hackers that they constantly attack his website. His website is presently down, but being reconfigured under Google Shield to protect it better. Here's his twitter feed in the mean time:

 

https://twitter.com/briankrebs?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

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It's almost impossible these days to defend against an attacker if the person or persons wants to target your website. Just ask cyber-crime expert and author Brian Krebs. He's ticked off so many hackers that they constantly attack his website. His website is presently down, but being reconfigured under Google Shield to protect it better. Here's his twitter feed in the mean time:

 

https://twitter.com/briankrebs?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Hey Jay

 

Not interested by the technicalities of some guru, just using a little common sense.

 

None of the many sites that I visit everyday (Avsim, OrbX, A2A, my Proboard, non gaming forums etc.) is regularly full of spam as the LM P3D's has been these last months. For LM, it is also often from the same sources (the chinese spamming for instance). It seems that the LM P3D team just does not care to protect their (antiquated ?) forum engine.

 

LM is a great company as a whole, this complacency is not good for their image. I wouldn't care much (don't hold shares at that time) but if they cannot protect themselves against spam, it may also mean than more dangerous beasties could be lurking there.


Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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LM is a great company as a whole, this complacency is not good for their image. I wouldn't care much (don't hold shares at that time) but if they cannot protect themselves against spam, it may also mean than more dangerous beasties could be lurking there.

 

If it were bots that were spamming the site, I might agree with you but there is no way to prevent a user from registering to gain access and then posting spam until they are locked out. I'd cut LM some slack on this one - unless you think that they should personally vet every user.

 

Vic


 

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If it were bots that were spamming the site, I might agree with you but there is no way to prevent a user from registering to gain access and then posting spam until they are locked out. I'd cut LM some slack on this one - unless you think that they should personally vet every user.

 

Vic

 

Well, that is what Pro ATC does with their forum, and people complain, but they get zero spam. 


 

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Dang spam.

 

mbmT9xD.jpg

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"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." [Abraham Lincoln]

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Well, I've been visting various forums for 20 years and have never once seen this kind of spamming in any other forum. Makes me wonder if I risk getting som malware visiting over there...

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Simmerhead - Making the virtual skies unsafe since 1987! 

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If it were bots that were spamming the site, I might agree with you but there is no way to prevent a user from registering to gain access and then posting spam until they are locked out. I'd cut LM some slack on this one - unless you think that they should personally vet every user.

 

Vic

Please... is it an user who posts several pages of the same post in a row as we often see on LM forum ? Sorry, I don't cut people sloppy with their security any slack in today internet world, even if they are making my favorite pastime. Their security is mine/yours too. LM has the means to have a decent forum engine and a full time webmaster doing the job.

Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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Well, I've been visting various forums for 20 years and have never once seen this kind of spamming in any other forum.

 

I've seen it many-many times sadly, some forums are quicker at cleaning it up than others, but it is a common problem. I've seen very small (run by a single person) messageboards give-up due to the amount of spam posts.

 

And they are only posts, so its unlikely you'll get anything nasty by visiting the forum, just don't open the posts, or follow any links.

 

Personal vetting works, but you sometimes have to wait weeks to join a forum with such a policy.

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If it were bots that were spamming the site, I might agree with you but there is no way to prevent a user from registering to gain access and then posting spam until they are locked out....

Does human generated spam really happen in that kinda volume on such a niche forum though? I would've expected the vast majority (95%+) to be bot spam, which any reasonably resourced forum is generally able to defend against. As others have said, it doesn't reflect well on a firm the size of Lockheed Martin although I can appreciate it may not be a huge concern for them.

 

I've never had any spam on my forums although a lot of known spambots visited, the automatic defences worked (seems most bots can't pass a twenty question multiple choice aviation exam LOL). I did get fed up of their visits though so blocked some Chinese and Russian IP ranges (seems to be where the bulk of spambots originate), and also had a lot of content-scraping SEO bots that didn't respect robots.txt hammering my bandwidth, so they got an IP ban too!


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 its unlikely you'll get anything nasty by visiting the forum, just don't open the posts, or follow any links.

 

 

How do they call that  ? wishful thinking ? If you can't protect your forum against spam, why would it be protected against other threats ? 


Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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How do they call that  ? wishful thinking ? If you can't protect your forum against spam, why would it be protected against other threats ? 

Seriously??

 

If you ask that question, you don't truly grasp how it all works and what the limitations are.


Ed Wilson

Mindstar Aviation
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