UPDATE 9/17
We think we've made some progress helping people that may have been infected. Please see here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=4836194#p4836194
UPDATE 9/15 9:00 am
4 hours of sleep... yay.
Good news, reports are coming in that we've been given the green light by Google!
9/15 2:34 am
Many of you noticed the problems we ran into today.
Short Version: The problem has been found and removed and now we're just waiting for the browsers / search engines to verify the fixes and remove us from their blacklists.
Longer Version:
Today I was gone all day helping my brother with some construction and cleanup. Well, of course things blow up once I'm away from the computer and won't be back on for hours.
Members started having some weird things happen and then started getting warning about BYC contanining "Malware". Thankfully a few members of the BYC Staff were able to contact me and we were able to work as a team to start the process of getting things fixed (especially thanks to Stacey for calling and Terrie for putting the forums in maintanance mode).
Basically our ad serving software was hacked, causing malware filters all over the InterWebs to go off. After we determined the attack was real we put the forums in maintanance mode until we could figure out what happened.
After a bunch of hours trouble shooting, restoring pre-hacked software backups, and removing all the ad codes from the sites we can now semi-confidently say our site is free from malware and once again open to our community of chicken enthusiasts.
Unfortuantley BYC (and the sister sites) are blacklisted by Google and so users on Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers may not be able to access BYC without getting a crazy page warning of DANGER! I've sent an appeal to the Google gods and have requested that they review the sites and remove their curse.
We're still unsure of what, if anything this malware attempt may have caused. We definitely encourage all our members to keep their antivirus software updated and run a scan of their system to ensure there aren't any problems. If we find more details we'll let you know.
I'm personally very sorry that this happened and apologize to all those who couldn't get their BYC fixes! It is wonderful being involved in such a large and vibrant community! Unfortunetly this also has the side effect of painting a target on our backs to people that are jealous that they can't have chickens.
If you have any questions, please let us know and we'll do the best we can to answer them.
We think we've made some progress helping people that may have been infected. Please see here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=4836194#p4836194
UPDATE 9/15 9:00 am
4 hours of sleep... yay.
9/15 2:34 am
Many of you noticed the problems we ran into today.
Short Version: The problem has been found and removed and now we're just waiting for the browsers / search engines to verify the fixes and remove us from their blacklists.
Longer Version:
Today I was gone all day helping my brother with some construction and cleanup. Well, of course things blow up once I'm away from the computer and won't be back on for hours.
Members started having some weird things happen and then started getting warning about BYC contanining "Malware". Thankfully a few members of the BYC Staff were able to contact me and we were able to work as a team to start the process of getting things fixed (especially thanks to Stacey for calling and Terrie for putting the forums in maintanance mode).
Basically our ad serving software was hacked, causing malware filters all over the InterWebs to go off. After we determined the attack was real we put the forums in maintanance mode until we could figure out what happened.
After a bunch of hours trouble shooting, restoring pre-hacked software backups, and removing all the ad codes from the sites we can now semi-confidently say our site is free from malware and once again open to our community of chicken enthusiasts.
Unfortuantley BYC (and the sister sites) are blacklisted by Google and so users on Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers may not be able to access BYC without getting a crazy page warning of DANGER! I've sent an appeal to the Google gods and have requested that they review the sites and remove their curse.
We're still unsure of what, if anything this malware attempt may have caused. We definitely encourage all our members to keep their antivirus software updated and run a scan of their system to ensure there aren't any problems. If we find more details we'll let you know.
I'm personally very sorry that this happened and apologize to all those who couldn't get their BYC fixes! It is wonderful being involved in such a large and vibrant community! Unfortunetly this also has the side effect of painting a target on our backs to people that are jealous that they can't have chickens.
If you have any questions, please let us know and we'll do the best we can to answer them.
