Over the weekend, we had a couple of attacks on CC’s forum via a vBulletin exploit (these forums run on vBulletin software). For short periods of time, code may have been injected in some pages which could trigger a malware alert, redirect the page, or cause other issues. We’re still investigating the details, as the symptoms varied. Our tech staff worked many hours over the weekend to restore service fully and in a secure manner.
If you accessed the forums in the last few days, be sure your virus/malware checker is up to date and scan your machine as a precaution.
We apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks for your patience during our outage - we know how many people rely on CC, and restored service absolutely as quickly as we could.
*UPDATE as of Monday, 2/11: We are continuing to analyze the nature of the exploit, and have taken multiple steps to increase the security of the site. We’ll keep you posted.
As a more general rule, always employ appropriate virus/malware detection on your devices - threats are everywhere. For example, millions of sites run on Wordpress today, which has been a favorite target of hackers. Other sites may be internally safe, but hackers have used ad delivery systems to hijack browsers. Be safe!*
Three times in the last few days, when I opened the CC webpage, I got a notification from Norton Internet Security that it had intercepted a Red Exploit Kit attack and that the breach it prevented was of High Risk. NIS supposedly caught it, and I supposedly had to do nothing in response to the attempted breach. But it did get my attention. The first time, I thought it was a fluke. The second time, I still thought it was probably a coincidence that it happened twice when opening CC. The third time, I was pretty sure that I was suddenly having a problem with CC and worried whether all my visits here had put something on my computer. Then, beginning early this morning, I began getting redirected to a ‘bad server’ page. I didn’t know what to make of all that. Glad to hear it wasn’t me, it was ‘you!’
^^Yeah, SteveC. That’s exactly what I got three different times over the weekend. It was the first thing Norton has ever blocked for me that it labeled “High Risk” with a little red dot.
Yeah, I am at school and it seems like something has permately been injected into the CPU. Every 5 min the on access scan alert pops up and says VirusScan Alert!
If you’re comfortable fixing your own computer, consider downloading one of the free scanners from MalwareBytes or emsisoft. If not, you might want to contact the people who maintain the scanner that’s giving you the alerts. Did your school install it? If so, that’s who I’d talk to.
I don’t know if this is a coincidence but I got a email saying that someone logged into my facebook account from Ukraine. This might have nothing to do with this but it just happened yesterday.
