TruckersReport Hacked on Monday - Status Report

My father was looking over my shoulder as the whole thing was unfolding. He's a retired telecommunications engineer. He's also a hacker on the level of Penelope Garcia's character in Criminal Minds (we learned early in life not to mess with daddy...and there are fates worse than being grounded or yelled at). He has similar thoughts as to the motivations of the hacker, and what went wrong, though he was unwilling to hypothesize too much without seeing the code.

If interrupting communications was the goal, the hacker failed to understand how these communities develop. Community members become friends. I've only been here a month and have contact with several members through other means. When bad stuff happens on my teacher forum I generally find out through Facebook or text message, as that's generally faster than an admin message through the forum software or email, and enough members have that info for me or one of the other mods/admins that we generally find out very quickly. In the case of a hack, we wouldn't use the forum software anyway, since that would be unreliable.

TLDR: stupid hacker made a bunch of rookie mistakes.

 

Pretty much every link that I have looked at on this site is legit. But with that in mind you do need to exercise caution in regards to links, on this site or any other, there are some very crafty people out there who can make a link look like it is going to one place, but in reality it takes you to another, and this is one of the most common ways that people end up with virus's, spyware, and malware on their computer.

To help avoid these problems move your pointer on top of the link, don't click on it. On the bottom left of your screen you will see the web address that the link is going to take you to, that is 99% accurate, but there is still that 1% chance that it is not. What you should do then is type that web address in at the top of your screen where you now see thetruckersreport. Doing it this way is a bit of a pain, but virus's, etc are more of a pain.

 

Another good way to avoid problems? Avoid Internet Explorer like the plague!

 

Since the hacking, I can no longer see new posts using My Profile's "Find latest posts" link.

 

Just received emails from TTR that someone was trying to get in my account by unsuccessfully entering a password for 5 times. The attempt came from IP 172.56.27.29

 

My bad, I am stupid. This is my Tapatalk trying to connect after I changed my password here on TTR

 

Well, I am one that got suckered.

I just went off duty after a long day, saw the request and of course I want to help.
So...
Lesson learned.

I hope the person responsible is caught, and strung up by his little toes.