Hey Gang.

A vigilant member of C3VR recently brought to my attention that when recently browsing C3VR his spam/virus blocker alerted him to a problem with C3VR.

I had not seen any issues, could not duplicate it, not did I hear anyone else complain about it.  So I thought maybe it was a one time thing.

Having that in the back of my mind, as I browsed the site the next few days, it occurred to me that page loads would sometimes be slow.  It seems to especially be a problem if an Amazon ad was on the page that was loading.  Then I looked at my status bar of my browser (FireFox) as the page was loading and it showed the names of some sites I had never heard of an looked very suspect.

I took the chance and pointed my browser directly to those addresses.  Fortunately, FireFox is smart enough to know that they are sites containing viruses and blocked my attempts.  That explained why those pages were loading slow for me.  Firefox was blocking each call to those sites.  And there were many of them.

So I found where the calls were coming from. Apparently C3VR was a recent victim of something called "SQL Injection".   Basically a fancy term for someone (or something) making unauthorized changes to the C3VR database.  

I have removed all the bad links and we should be virus free for now.  I also need to work to add code to keep this from happening in the future. I will be doing that ASAP.

In the meantime, I suggest everyone make sure their Anti Virus protection software is up to date and run a full scan on your system to make sure that it did not make its way to your PC.  if you do not have any anti virus protection, I suggest you do a Google search for it and download it today.   The two major players in the market are Norton and McAfee.  I am not endorsing either, just helping you recognize brand names.

Also, it may not hurt to try downloading FireFox and using that as your browser. I have used it for years and love it.  It is said to be safer than Microsoft Internet Explorer.  You can find the new version 3.0 at www.FireFox.com

I hope this has not caused anyone any trouble.  If you noticed any issues in the past week or two, or notice anything fishy in the next couple of weeks, please report it to me immediately.

Thank you!
Adam Wartell2008-07-14 18:44:00

I KNEW something was going on, but I just assumed it was on my end...it usually is! Pages have been loading slow, and I too have noticed the strange "Ads"(for lack of better term)...
I have also been having trouble getting into my P/M box, both here, and at the shop. Firefox has apparently been trying to tell me "NO-NO-NO!!! Don't go in there!!!"
Dang poachers...
I can vouch for Mozilla/Firefox being safer for browsing than IE. Mama uses IE, but I never do. I can always tell when she's been looking around the www....the AV programs go nuts!
Thanks for letting us know, boss....you da man!!


btw...I use AdAware/AdWatch, AVG(Anti-virus and Anti-Spyware from Grisoft...no longer free, tho), Windows Defender, and a couple others to help keep my box virus free. Norton will not work for my ISP...Mcafee is good, too, but I don't have that on this one....Adams' Apple2008-07-14 18:59:13

Guess that explains all the requests for 'cookies' I've been blocking lately.

It is a little worse than I thought.
Any database field that was over 4000 characters was likely truncated to 4000 characters.  This likely would be on forum messages.  If you happen to notice any forum posts that look cut off, please let me know.
I'm not sure what I can do about it, though.

bastages!

[QUOTE=Norsky] Guess that explains all the requests for 'cookies' I've been blocking lately.

[/QUOTE]


Hmmmm maybe? I have noticed in the last couple of weeks at least, that AdWatch has been "blocking" about 75% MORE cookies than usual. Instead of(what I think is normal) around 20-25 cookies per session, it has been catching over 80-90 per session.
Even my new AdAware '08 has started showing stuff that it has never "found/blocked/quarantined" before a week or so ago.

Adam...is there any way to know WHERE this bug came from? Was it a "bot", or possibly something from another site/link? We all post links to other sites/photos, etc., so I'm just curious if it was possible for that to happen from posting links...

I did have a big issue last nite with attempting to post both on the forums, AND with P/M...matter of fact, I couldn't even P/M you or Jim about it... I rebooted after trying to figure it out for a while, and all was well after that, so that particular thing may have been on my end...again... That problem was, I couldn't get anything to actually appear on-screen when I was typing a message. Then, when I tried to P/M you(Adam) it said your box was full, so I tried Jim....nothing...it just wouldn't post the message....perhaps I may have an infection also...time for Dr. Feelgud....

Joel,  regarding AVG Anti-Virus.    This program (the latest version)is STILL FREE.  If you download it from the Grisoft website, you'd be hard pressed to find the free version.   Go to  www.majorgeeks.com and select the 'anti virus' link.  Page thru until you find AVG and click that link.  You'll get the FREE version...

I have the free(AVG) edition already. Problem with that is they are not updating it anymore, so you have to run with the older definition files. Still better than nothing, tho.
They DO have a free edition of the AVG, and you can get it directly from Grisoft, but it has limited features...once again, still better than nothing. It combines the regular AVG free with the Anti-spyware program. That's what I have on the shop 'puter here.
Thanks John!

I just loaded AVG Free version 8.0 into my computer today.  It has all the updates and seems to work fine.  I downloaded it from Download.com.

Thanks for working hard to keep us virus free, Adam.  I have had a few notices pop up on my laptop about certain items that had to be quarantined.  It always seemed to happen while I was on C3VR.