Change your passwords everyone!

[pdxfj]

I received a notification from another message board that they had been hacked and were forcing a password change.  The board in question runs off Vbulletin. FJOwners uses SMF.

Checking the site: https://www.leakedsource.com/ reports (some of) the other vbulletin sites have also been hacked, along with ONE SMF site (this one I'm guessing) and the one site that notified me in the first place.  You can search your board username on the LeakedSource site.  I did not pay for the detailed information, but then my username is rather unique and I don't visit too many sites using that name.

So I would suggest taking the necessary steps to change the passwords on any and all message boards you are on.  Just to be safe..

As you can see, a strong passwords on message boards do not mean a whole lot.  Try and keep passwords unique on each site so the risk of someone gaining access to other places is minimal. Just don't be dumb and make your password "FJ1200" or something (easy to guess) like that.  Even if the passwords are/were encrypted, the level of encryption in bulletin board software is likely somewhat archaic, compared to that of enterprise level systems.  Thankfully there really is not much information stored here (SS#, Credit Cards, etc).


This public service announcement has been brought to you by "Mr. Bean".

[pdxfj]

Ok.. so a bit of an update on this after doing some research over the weekend.

My apologies if I caused anyone to panic.  I wanted to get the information out so I could hopefully help protect folks.

The "hack" actually took place on www.VerticalScope.com earlier this year.  VerticalScope is a massive Forum hosting site for many different message boards.  Over 40 million people had their account information stolen which could contain Names, Addresses, Credit card information, passwords, etc.

I suggest taking a few minutes and visit VerticalScope.  Search sites you visit to see if they are hosted there.  If they are, I would change your passwords.

Sadly there is really no way to stop these sort of things, but at least we can try and make it a bit more difficult for someone to use our personal information for their gain.

One added note: FJOwners is NOT hosted on VerticalScope.

[racerrad8]

Garth,

Thank you for the update. It is really an unfortunate part of the internet anymore. I am not sure if you read a few weeks ago, but some "bots" were able to get onto my website and "card test". this resulted in more than 3000 transactions in less than five days and each & everyone has a transaction & associated fee.

Now, I am responsible for the fees for all of the attempts. I have submitted all of the paperwork disputing the charges, but you know how that goes.

Thanks again, Randy - RPM