Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Not sure if it's me but I want to the ARarchive site just a bit ago and I saw a something completely different as I feel that the site was taken over or something else but it's all in Chinese

Here is a link to the site to see what I mean- http://www.ararchive.com/

So it appears to be the main home and everything else except the image gallery as I have a link to the gallery and that seem normal- http://www.ararchive.com/gallery3/

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

It's ads for Japanese coffee. I saw it this morning on my phone, and I was so scared I'd gotten a virus!

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Okay it's not me as well. Though I would what is up with the site through

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Literally just came from there, saw it too. Actually have chills right now wondering if I got off the page quickly enough to avoid a virus.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

That's weird, it looks normal to me... I don't know if that's because I'm browsing it from my Wii U at the moment or because it's over, but I'm not encountering that problem. Good thing, too; let's hope this is resolved soon, if it's not over already.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Well I just checked again after reading your post and I'm getting the visuals like yesterday with the Japanese text and Tea ads

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Then I guess it only comes from the ads. I'm browsing the site as I type with an ad-blocker enabled, and the site appears perfectly normal. That's still weird, I never heard of an ad that does this... I hope something can be done against it; I don't know if it's dangerous, but even if it's not, it's intrusive and annoying as hell.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Hmm I see, I might try enabling mine and see what happen but yeah this is annoying

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Yeah, there's got to be someone on this forum that can either pass the message on or let us know what's going on. Heideggar is in charge there, right?

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

From my knowledge, that is correct. Heideggar is in charge of the site

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Someone please try it now and see if you still get the ad. It never showed up for me so I did not know there was anything going on. I think I have rooted it all out, so it would help if someone who has seen it checks,

Heidegger

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Alright it works now and here is a screenshot for proof

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Thank you for checking

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

It got hacked again, now another AD is overtaking site.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Crap, I couldn't tell thanks to my ad blocker. Thanks, I posted a warning on the AR Archive; I hope these attacks will stop soon, they don't seem to be after users' data, but I can't help worrying too much about these things.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

My AD blocker does not seem to work right. If I fully activate it, all I get is a blank page.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

That's weird... Mine seems to work fine; I have it fully activated at all times, but the site doesn't look any different.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

I was using ADblock ultimate on firefox. It see no ads on site and when I remove elements the screen goes blank.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

I was able to get though by clicking home on the top of the page.

Also you can use this link:
http://www.ararchive.com/index.php?o...page&Itemid=13

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

I un-hacked it again and this time I think I found where they got in. I have made some other changes that make it unlikely they will be able to hack the front page again. Hopefully that will hold until I finish writing the new software for the AR Archive,

Heidegger

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

I don't know if it has to do with hacking or if it's just a false alarm, but I can't access the site anymore; I just get a blank page.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Got hacked again with a new AD, how and why do they keep doing it.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

The blank page was while I was un-hacking the site again. They used a different approach this time, but each time they hack the site I close the way they got in so at some point it won't work for them anymore. Old open source software may be buggy and exploitable but there aren't infinite exploits. And locking down write permissions also goes a long way towards ruining their day,

H

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Once again, thanks a lot Heidegger. I hope they'll stop sooner than later; it doesn't seem like users' data are in any more danger than before, but seeing hackers this stupidly stubborn is a bit worrying.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

I do go there once in a while, but i never signed up. Kinda glad I didn't, although it might be good to post something to the interactive. Is there still an interactive?

There a lot of good stories that involve AR process.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Well, the interactive "Continuous story" is down, as well as the BojayPremium, Large Media, Videos, AR Chat and Old Archive sections.

Also, the message system don't notice you anymore of new messages, you can no longer properly submit a story without it looking covered with text artefacts, and the images embedded in existing stories have disappeared since a few weeks.

But otherwise you can still see the old images and read the old stories that were already posted, so I guess the website got that for itself.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Welp, the site is down AGAIN, this time alongside Visible Time.

I don't know if that's related to the hackings, but to be honest, this is seriously making me consider leaving the AR Archive, at least until it's reliably strengthened up. As much as I hate leaving like that, and I realize Heidegger's not at fault, I nonetheless can't stop worrying. I might be overreacting, and there may not be any more danger than last times, but that's the thing, I don't know, and I'd rather not take any chances.

I know that's not the place to discuss it, but since the Archive is down for now, I have no choice until it gets back.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Yeah Azerty I am done with this. Not worth the risk.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

I visit the VisibleTime section a lot, I never see any problems there...

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Aside from the fact that it went down for a few hours, as I mentioned in my previous post, I don't see a lot of problems with Visible Time itself either, even though I visit it very often myself.

The problem was mostly on the main AR Archive, which got hacked three times in a week; each time was to fill the site with very intrusive ads for Japanese coffee, apparently, which changed the site's text. Apparently, there was no evidence of the users' data being endangered, but I couldn't help but fear there would come a time where they would be jeopardized, hence why I left.

In hindsight, I might have overreacted, especially since Heidegger was always so quick to solve these problems (I trust him, it's just the hackers I was wary of), but I'd rather be safe than sorry for the time being.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Okay. I'm getting a little annoyed now. They seem bound and determined to hack into the ARarchive and mess with it with AD's.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Found and fixed,

Heidegger

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Nope, shown as pirated right now.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

In fact, the ARA is down since yesterday. Is everything alright?

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

He may have taken it down and did a back up of the databases that held all of the information and he's probably going to attempt to upgrade it into a new system. At least that's what I would do in his place and I work on servers all damn day.

If I encountered fundamentally flawed security in some software I'm using, best time to money ratio is to get something else while migrating the databases. Trying to continually fix it, isn't really worth it after a bit. Especially when your dealing with people that hack software for a living.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

Good strategy, demon. I hope that someone with web service can volunteer a little assistance to Heidegger as he's experiencing some health issues right now.

Re: Something is up the ARarchive site
 

This time it wasn't hackery that caused the outage. I had to update PHP on the server and that caused the Archive software to fail (I don't know which obsolete or removed feature was causing it). When I installed an older version of PHP for the archive's hosting, everything came back up. I'm afraid the day when I can't do that securely is coming.

I am writing my own platform for hosting the Archive because it is the kind of thing I do for a living (custom content management and commerce systems) and none of the existing open source or paid solutions do all of the things I want the Archive to do.

Essentially, I want the Archive front page to show the latest updates to any area of the Archive (stories, images, discussions) which it pretty much does now. I do want to improve the presentation (especially of stories) and make the site mobile friendly because it is not that right now. The deeper change will be to allow people to access content by who uploaded or created it (kind of like deviant art) - this will benefit content creators as well because they can see and manage their content from one place rather than by each type. For images, I want to set it up so that sequences can be uploaded and appear in order - most image galleries are not friendly to that approach. With custom software, I will be able to improve each section as people use it and find issues or new needs. I am really looking forward to the day when the Archive is on the new platform and firing on all cylinders.