Recent Announcements

[Joshua Farrell]

I would like to make the following announcements, as they weren't made apparently.

Recent Downtime

Recently, we have been up and down for the last past what, week and a half? The reasons? If you were on when it first started, our first downtime that caused a few issues with being up, was that our host had suddenly decided to update the server we were on without warning, which did cause some issues on our end with being up.

Second item of downtime that we have been experiencing almost immediately after that, was a DDoS attack on the website. During the issue, our host did a wonderful job ensuring the server didn't crash while the attack was happening. If you notice an occasional downtime longer than a few minutes, please tell us! As we want to try to help with alleviating it if possible.

Matt has Retired

Matt has retired today, after almost 2 years of dedication to Forum Promotion as part of the staff. We would like to thank him for his service as admin for the past year and four months, and would like to say that he did a good job while he was admin, as some items we now have on this forum, is because of his caring work for this forum.

Thanks for your time Matt!

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If you have any questions regarding the downtime, or anything else, feel free to reply to this thread, or PM myself or an another member of the Administration Team.

The Administration Team

 

[Deleted member 29704]

Thank you for everything, [user]Matt[/user] and thanks for Posting this [user]Joshua Farrell[/user] 🙂

 

[Cryckit]

Thank you for being a great staff member during you time here on the forum [user]Matt[/user] and for always helping people when they needed it. Your contributions here will not be forgotten. I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors. 🙂

 

[Page]

Matt is leaving! He's been here when things needed to be done 😕 . It has been stressful for the last month of crazy things happening and you probably made the right choice to leave and move on with other projects and for that thanks for your time with FP and hopefully still post around and very good luck :great:

 

[Mushmellow]

Good luck @Matt

 

[Gio]

Woah, this comes as a shock. I remember when you and I got hired Matt back in 2014, time flies. Thanks for everything you did man, your dedication couldn't have been matched by anyone else. Thanks for everything. 🙁

 

[Deleted member 25872]

Thank you for your contributions @Matt! 🙂

 

[triforceguy1]

I got a PM, titled 'Downtime', advertising some other forum, anyone else got this?

 

[Deleted member 29704]

I got a PM, titled 'Downtime', advertising some other forum, anyone else got this?

Hello, the Staff Team are aware of this. The Appropriate Action has been taken on the Member, if you haven't already then please Report the PM.

 

[triforceguy1]

I got a PM, titled 'Downtime', advertising some other forum, anyone else got this?

Hello, the Staff Team are aware of this. The Appropriate Action has been taken on the Member, if you haven't already then please Report the PM.

Fantastic, I noticed they were banned, I'm guessing a member was very peeved with the downtime x3

 

[Thomasss]

I got a PM, titled 'Downtime', advertising some other forum, anyone else got this?

Yeah, I banned him. 😛 It's all good. ^.^

 

[Justin M]

Seems like FP is back on its feet now. Glad to see!

 

[Deleted member 29704]

The DDoS Attack is still present, I will bring this issue up Personally with the Staff.

 

[Cosmic]

Thanks, guys. 🙂

 

[Finn]

Sorry to see you go, Matt. Your time and commitment has been much appreciated, we'll miss you. 🙁

 

[erich]

I'm deeply concerned about the data breach that happened. Can you please address this?

 

[Cosmic]

I'm deeply concerned about the data breach that happened. Can you please address this?

My understanding is that a full backup of the DB was accidentally made publicly available when MasterA switched hosts. Anyone could have downloaded it during that time, although since the server was being DDoSed and it's a very large file, there's no guarantee that anyone got all of it. That file will probably contain the email address of every FP member and an encrypted version of their password. The passwords cannot be decrypted, but a brute force attack can be employed against them. Current technology could probably let a properly equipped hacker decrypt anywhere between a few passwords a day to one every few days. It's unlikely that someone will be able to decrypt all of them in a reasonable span of time, but it's also possible for a targeted attack to be launched against some users. I recommend everyone change their passwords on external sites if it was identical to your FP password.

^ Note that I may be incorrect on some details as I'm not staff and was not staff when the screwup occurred.

 

[Sam]

I'm deeply concerned about the data breach that happened. Can you please address this?

If you use your password anywhere other than FP, you should absolutely be changing it.

 

[KnownSyntax]

Thanks for letting us know and force changing the passwords so that we can change them for sure.

Maybe make it more obvious that this is the reason why? Also as a FYI your email went to my junk mail box on GMail.

 

[Page]

Glad that I didn't use my personal email address that is linked to all of my things, I used my other email that is linked to FP that hasn't got much things linked to other then one little thing that I won't say here just in case the attacker is reading this.

Should ban IP address that you think that attacked, won't make any difference anyway