Les Ombres d'Esteren - Forum officiel

I am raising a concern about the security of the website. Since joining I have been subject to a number of spams in French plus a hack of my mail to use as a spamming medium. I have no contact with any other French website. I would advise a review of your security levels and checks on hacking access (including checking for malware on the site).

Of course, I am not the longest registered member here... But I am not getting any Spam Mails at the moment... in french or other languages. But it is always a good idea to check security measures from time to time.

No problem here .

Steerpike65, we will check that. We are using tyhis PHPbb since a long time now, no real issue apart from some crash.

If some one have any problem, please tell us !

Usually there should not be any problem since you hide your email adress...

I'm the owner of a PhpBB forum since 2008 and before, and had spam problems, but not spams like that. It may come from another website where you registered :/

I think it's possible that the hacking of my mail may have come from elsewhere and be coincidental but the French spam I'm pretty sure must have come from this site since I've no connection to any other French site and have never received French spam before. I guess it's possible it could have come from elsewhere so I'm not saying I'm 100% sure.

These things happen but it's only fair to highlight it in case it can be stopped from happening again if it was a security breach here.

Well, not pointing any fingers here, but I don't really know how I should read your statement, Nel.
Having been using phpBB for a while is good, especially if there's no stability issues as you very wisely put it.
But, more importantly, the matter is to know when the forum's engine has last been updated.

When it comes to such forum software, and by that I mean the most popular ones -hence including phpBB-, exploits are frequently uncovered since they're gathering many users and represent a lot of interesting data for the "bad guys", who logically favor targetting them over less-than-famous products on the market.
The good part is that huge companies and/or communities are usually responsive to these threats, and most of the time they publish fixes within days (weeks, at most) following announcement of any such vulnerability.
The bad part is that, if a forum's admin doesn't apply those patches, said forum becomes more and more unsafe as more and more breaches hit public knowledge and pile in, making it easier and easier for more and more bad guys to target it.

A huge paragraph summarizable in the fact that Esteren's forum engine should be kept up to date, supposing it's not already the case (and I have no information concerning whether or not it's done).
Regardless of any actual inconvenience having already taken place, or not.

Hey,
Thanks for pointing out these spam issues.
Be reassured, the admins try to keep the forum up to date as fast as they can.

The forum currently runs on the 3.0.11 release.
The latest update for PHPBB forum came up the 28th of Sept 2013, about 10 days ago. This update is mainly a "bug fixing" hotfix, as you can see there:
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2200921
It is by no means a security update. Hence, I would tend to think (let's be humble and cautious) there isn't any security issue regarding the forum, at the moment.

I understand the concern. Spams are a pain in the A. (wich is why I choose Webmai/ Gmail over software clients). Did you investigate further? Updated malware, anti spyware, anti virus, etc?

Please, let us know the outcome as it'll be interesting for us all to know what's going on

Thanks for the clarifications.

I'll venture a bit off-topic : I asked on the french forum whether it would be possible to include phpBB's Tapatalk plugin on Esteren's forums.
Maybe you know if it's in the pipe ?

SeigneurAo a écrit :Thanks for the clarifications.
I'll venture a bit off-topic : I asked on the french forum whether it would be possible to include phpBB's Tapatalk plugin on Esteren's forums.
Maybe you know if it's in the pipe ?

It's on the todo list, as far as I know. The only couple of questions though is whether it's at the beggining of the list or further down, and how fast do the ticks are done ^^
I wish I can help you more with that, really do. I'm sure it'll come, sooner or later ... hopefully

They are many things on the burners at the moment and unless thr is a major issue, actions are postponed until time gets better :/