Website problems

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CCC
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Website problems

Some of you may have been getting redirected by a malicious script that was installed as part of some recent hacking. If you're reading this you aren't experiencing the problem, but for those who are curious here are the details.

Over the past few months several weaknesses in the Drupal system have been exploited by hackers. Generally a successful attack method gets published and then the lesser hackers just run the scripts needed to instal the various malware. The biggest one was named "Drupalgeddon 2" (you can search it out by that name) and Drupal responded with a security update but many systems (including ours, probably) had already been hit. This past week I updated the site and then the very next day another update was released and I updated again. At some point (I think it was between the two updates) all of our content nodes had a script added to them that, every time that text was displayed on a page, redirected the user's browser to a different site that was basically a bogus tech support website that hoped to convince the user that their computer was infected and that they should call 1-800-IAM DUMB (or whatever) to have a technician walk you through cleaning your computer of the virus. Of course there is no virus (so they are successful, right?) but you need to pay them. These scams are everywhere.

Anyhow, last night I finally cleaned up ALL of the content nodes and some older malware that was lying around (probably orphaned by the updates) and as far as I know the problem is gone. If you have a problem with a redirect, please email the webmaster address and tell us what page you were trying to get to.

On my Mac at home I just got the redirect, but on my Windows 10 machine at work I got the disembodied female voice warning me of a security issue.

If any of you actually responded to the bogus tech support request by calling a phone number or entering a password, please let me know.

--
Anton

CCC
CCC's picture

Over the weekend I migrated the CCC website to a different server. I see a pretty noticeable speed increase and I hope you do, too. If you see anything that isn't working right, please contact Bill Shaw, Rick Seaman, or me (Anton).