Oxygen Basic

Information => Open Forum => Topic started by: Mike Lobanovsky on April 29, 2014, 02:33:24 PM

Title: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: Mike Lobanovsky on April 29, 2014, 02:33:24 PM

Gentlemen,

basicprogramming.org's pages seem to be infected with adware:

(http://i1240.photobucket.com/albums/gg490/FbslGeek/Malware.png)

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: JRS on April 29, 2014, 03:33:37 PM

Is that IE your running? (strike II)

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: Mike Lobanovsky on April 29, 2014, 04:48:17 PM

I checked it with Mozilla FF, IE 10, and Chrome. Just click "View the most recent posts on the forum." at the bottom of the page. Seems they've got an autoregistered spambot but you can never know what other sh*t it may have brought along onto the forum's pages.

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: JRS on April 29, 2014, 05:31:11 PM

I was referring to the IE security flaw and the warnings to use another browser until a fix is released. That brings up another question I would appreciate your thoughts on. Why is XP being exclude from a fix when this is a browser issue not an OS issue even through MS has claimed for years the two can't be decoupled? Why doesn't Microsoft post a general IE fix on their site which can be downloaded from any version of their OS offerings that supports an IE browser?

Just another reason why Charles and I use the e-mail registration method.

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: Mike Lobanovsky on April 29, 2014, 06:05:41 PM

I'm not very bright in web development(s) but I guess IE is not just another application but rather an integral part of the underlying OS. It's bound with its host OS much more tightly than it seems at a first glance. IIRC every Windows has had its own dedicated version of IE, e.g. IE8 for XP, IE9 for Vista, IE10 for 7, etc. While you can run IE8 under Win 7, well mostly, you can't do it vice versa. Hence MS' reluctance to keep on patching IE8 once XP isn't supported any more. Perhaps it is not even programmatically feasible under a legacy OS.

We were suffering from spambots heavily at fbsl dot net for so long as we were using captchas for forum registration. Then I installed a simple phpbb3 questionnaire plugin with about a dozen simplest questions based on the contents of FBSL license (like who's the copyright owner, is FBSL freeware, etc.) that's published on the forum. I included 3 or 4 variants of acceptable answesr to every question and now we're having automatic registration back for about 6 months without a single spambot breaking through the barrier for all that time.

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: JRS on April 29, 2014, 06:12:24 PM

My thoughts are if someone isn't willing to put forth the effort to send an e-mail to register, the chances of them contributing anything of value is slim.

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: Mike Lobanovsky on April 29, 2014, 06:38:06 PM

That stands to reason if you're after contributors only. But phpbb3 also has some other restrictions like not being able to see picture uploads or download attachments if you're not a forum member - all that while our forum is mostly user-oriented. That's not good, PR-wise. While we were able to tweak the software to let our guests download our zips, we couldn't do anything about viewing full-sized pictures or more than one picture per post. So what you see on the FBSL forum pages are mostly links to image sharing servers. Otherwise a "You're not authorized to see images in this message" label is all you're able to see.

There are currently about three dozens of FBSL users that are coming to the forum regularly but never posted a message. Yet I can PM them via the forum post and I get their PM's to me in return. We also lost over 200 registered human members due to two major server breakdowns in the past three years alone. I don't know if they preferred not to re-register or simply lost interest and abandoned ship.

P.S. And one more thing - we have Russia, China and hotmail dot com registrations auto-rejected. They were giving us too much trouble all the time.

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: Aurel on April 29, 2014, 08:27:10 PM

Quote

Then I installed a simple phpbb3 questionnaire plugin

good ...i use same method on my forum to...
just add a simple question :D

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: JRS on April 29, 2014, 08:28:15 PM

Quote

That stands to reason if you're after contributors only.

What I mean by contributors are people that post something not just join and never login.

I'm sure this IE flaw is going to cost MS big time with their BING advertisers. Whatever they gained over Google (mostly throwing money at it) is now lost. I think Microsoft's update system and zero day responses are pitiful for a company that large and with so many installs on the desktop.

Title: Re: Malware Infection at BP.org?
Post by: Aurel on April 29, 2014, 09:22:43 PM

Ha Ha this is funny:

Quote

I'm surprised anyone still posts there. It's mostly a retro hobbyist site for old guys with no friends.

what is then QB64 forum  ;D ;D ;D

with Pete,Clippy OLDDlover  ;D ;D ;D