How easy can a forum be hacked?

[RegBoss]

Hello members. Do you think it would be hard for a hacker to access members posts on this forum? I am having an issue with a member that makes me wonder if certain people have the skills to manipulate this forum. Since Snowden's revelations about how any server can be hacked, it is hard to trust anything posted online.

 

[usernamex]

Good question, sorry you are having troubles @F00lu

@Eric Lyon @Paul Buonopane

 

[ison]

Hello members. Do you think it would be hard for a hacker to access members posts on this forum? I am having an issue with a member that makes me wonder if certain people have the skills to manipulate this forum. Since Snowden's revelations about how any server can be hacked, it is hard to trust anything posted online.

Not a coder, but based on discussions I've read on Bitcointalk.org, hacking a forum is not difficult. The named forum even had to disable avatars for a period of time owing to some sort of vulnerability. They are now developing a completely new node.js forum software to replace the existing forum. In case you're wondering why the forum is a target (especially from one particular region), there's money to be made there - even from users accounts.

That aside, what exactly do you mean by "I am having an issue with a member that makes me wonder if certain people have the skills to manipulate this forum." Has said member demonstrably made changes to any part of this forum? If so, ring the alarm bells.

 

[baseballworld]

Probably about as easy as any other forum if the person really knows what they are doing.

 

[TDM]

I'd say that hacking is not the hard part - staying below radar is the art.

I once got hacked on a vps and also shared hosting
-> infecting every single file with malicious code and effectively me acting as a spam server.

It was a nightmare but still sorted out pretty fast. If it had just implemented something more smart.. I may would still not be aware of the issue today.

I further would say you would have to figure out if this is a personal attack (someone wants to get into your account)

or if it's "just" some random scanning and using weak entries (nothing personal with you, just took the chance as some door was open. Like weak passwords and such..)

Guess nP with so many users and global reach is attacked on regular/daily basis.. so if something is going on, I'd let them know (good chance they are already aware)


Good luck to you!


PS
"members posts" as individual member's posts? In that case you got chances your email and/or forum password is hacked. It could also be something like a keylogger on your PC.

 

[NPer]

Probably about as easy as any other forum if the person really knows what they are doing.

Indeed, and when they know what they are doing, they can even go undetected.

 

[N-A]

I'd say that a free forum like phpBB is vulnerable to "hacking"... and definitely spamming.

vBulletin has its share of spam attacks as well.

XenForo, the platform that namePros runs on, is no different than vBulletin. It's had its share of spam attacks. But, @Paul Buonopane and the rest of the tech team did a great job in stopping most of them in their tracks, most likely by rewriting most of the original code that is "open source" (in other words unencrypted code that is visible to "hackers" to manipulate and figure out ways to exploit it). You will see very little spam on here these days. The posts you do see, maybe once a week, at certain times? They're wiped clean within mere minutes because there's always a staff member online, and a member to notice it and bring it to their attention, of course.

I'd say nP is fairly safe in comparison to the rest of the forums online using just the standard software provided. This especially goes for the free ones.

 

[deez007]

Hmmm not sure if I understand perfectly..

when you say "access members posts" are you referring to them actually accessing your post and then editing it??

If you suspect something fishy going on it's prob best to report the issue to NP staff and ask them to look into it for you... if someone is trying to manipulate the data then they should drop kicked outta here...

 

[VictorVictories]

If one ponders deep, then nothing that is online is safe. There are many resources available that can give an overview about hacking. Thus every user that is online must be vigilant and if anything is out of normal then better report it to concern person.

 

[Julio]

I say yes look at all the forums that get spambot post by the numbers. I know of a game forum that is always get hit by these bots it's annoying as heck to see these post.