how someone might get into a phpbb forum and hack without access to an admin account? just wondering as it happened to a fourm i know last week. racking brains wondering if it could be done (by someone with a little mysql knowledge) or not.
only other option is someone gave out their admin account log in which i cant see but may well have been this option.
If your forum is a phpBB2 forum then they are known for being quite easy to hack. It might have been done by a key logger on your computer and someone found your password through that or they can get it other ways as well i think using scripts of some kind and then that can get them into an admin account. It might also be possible that a password was guessed or found out from another forum and used on your forum and that is why you should always use a different password for your boards compared to other people boards as admins can find out users passwords. Also make sure the passwords are random and contain both letters and numbers and even higher and lower case letters. Don't have your user-name in your password. It could be one of many things.
thanks for the reply, it was an old phpbb board yeh.
direct competition with an old admin (account was deactivated) anyhoo they got on deleted everything put on bitchy logo and locked down. so dead site now. in process of starting up again but wondering if its worth it if they can easily gain access. all my passwords are unique (containing all symbols numbers lowercase lettering and uppercase lettering) the new board is on freeforums.org not sure what version of phpbb they are using is this as insecure?
Freeforums.org use the latest version of phpBB2 (phbb2.0.22) so it is a safe as you can get really. They might even have some extra security aswell but i am not sure. They will be upgrading to phpBB3 (like this forum) when a stable version is released which is even safer (i believe). There has been a few freeforums.org boards hacked but they were mainly all from co admins who decided to be idiots and delete the owner and ruin the board. So if you are the only admin or you trust the other admin(s) and you have secure passwords you should be alright. ~biggrin~
ok cool thankyou makes me feel better. the forum i am making is a gift to a trusted friend. my experience of forum running hasnt been great so i want out. but i dont want the same thing to happen to her again. as you know it takes a lot of work setting up a forum, have done all that for her but if there was a risk of it all going pear shaped again then i wouldnt have put her through it again!
(the destroyed forum was my original forum that i handed over to this friend last week, maybe a grace though as it was an old version of phpbb and this one is so much user friendly)
