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So, what's the solution to prevent future outages of the sort? Is there anything a person can install?
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I have asked my ISP to do what they can to block unwanted IPs, but there is no 100-percent guarantee. A determined hacker can find a way into just about anything. Even highly secure web sites can get hacked by determined hackers. Some of these idiots spend their whole lives trying to figure out how to get into other sites. The good news is, most of the time they are just trying to disrupt things and cause destruction, so if your backed up on a regular basis you’re not going to loose too much. One thing we can do is try to block the IPs that are affected (and of course notify the ISPs of the offending IPs). The problem is, in most of these cases, the IP address that is getting into the server is owned by some unsuspecting schmuck whose own computer has been hijacked without his knowledge and is being used to perpetrate the hack.
I am looking into ways that I can make the server more secure, and I’ll certainly do what I can. It helps that I make regular backups of the forum files so that in the event of such a problem, I can restore things in relatively short order. My guess is, the ultimate source of this latest event is in China since the website that was trying to re-direct people was owned by someone in China.
Basil