What's up with all the Maintenance Mode Today

[CFFF 1.5]

?

[J Francho]

Virus scan.

[TheBeast]

?

Look to the left of your screen.

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[Dan:]

I keep getting this message:

System Information

Unable to open ./Messages/.txt

Verbose: No such file or directory

[Dan:]

ahhh, and I just turned my advertisement block off and I'm getting virus intrusion alerts from my anti-virus! What's happening?!?!

[.dsaavedra.]

my antivirus just said it blocked a recent attempt to attack my computer!

[Glenn]

We are having difficulties with the site.  There's a problem that keeps corrupting the files.  I highly doubt it's any virus or trojan, but it could be causing scripting errors that are giving false positives.

However, if you are getting virus warnings, PLEASE list off exactly every ad you see on the page.  I want to ensure that it is NOT any ads. 

That said, this may not be associated with any ad at all, so let's not jump to any conclusions.  I believe my host provider changed something on the server that is causing the problems.  I am working with them right now.

[.dsaavedra.]

now i keep getting the same error message as Dan

[Sam]

Me, too.

I also keep getting a virus from some source.

I cleaned the computer with Spybot and then went onto this site and then re-cleaned the computer again but that virus was gone so the problem is not with this site.

Or was it?????

The virus is Right Media.

Thanks to all for the updates as I thought it was my computer.

[Glenn]

Are you certain it was a virus?  Avast peggs certain cookies as the "Real Media" virus, in which case it isn't a virus at all.

Nonetheless, if there's an ad running a rogue script, it could be causing the issues on the forums. So if anyone reading this gets a "virus warning", PLEASE let me know exactly which ads are appearing on your screen (including the ones on the very bottom).  The more people that report it, the better we can narrow down which ad (if any) is throwing the error.

Thanks for your help!

Glenn

[Glenn]

fyi - the "Real Media" virus is over 3 years old, and infected IE 6 or older browsers.  If you're running a newer version of IE, or have updated security patches in the last 3 years, you have nothing to worry about. You can't get infected.

[skunked_again]

Are you certain it was a virus? Avast peggs certain cookies as the "Real Media" virus, in which case it isn't a virus at all.

Nonetheless, if there's an ad running a rogue script, it could be causing the issues on the forums. So if anyone reading this gets a "virus warning", PLEASE let me know exactly which ads are appearing on your screen (including the ones on the very bottom). The more people that report it, the better we can narrow down which ad (if any) is throwing the error.

Thanks for your help!

Glenn

my avast never did a thing, which makes me think that if there was a virus it was a poor effort.

[firefightn15]

For what it's worth, after longing on, I was going to member bios and getting to a topic by going to their most recent posts.  But to then navigate away from that was the same result as trying to open them from the drop down tabs.....no access.

[Dan:]

Are you certain it was a virus? Avast peggs certain cookies as the "Real Media" virus, in which case it isn't a virus at all.

Nonetheless, if there's an ad running a rogue script, it could be causing the issues on the forums. So if anyone reading this gets a "virus warning", PLEASE let me know exactly which ads are appearing on your screen (including the ones on the very bottom). The more people that report it, the better we can narrow down which ad (if any) is throwing the error.

Thanks for your help!

Glenn

my avast never did a thing, which makes me think that if there was a virus it was a poor effort.

The a/v software not doing anything can also be a BAD sign!

[Fishing Rhino]

You can navigate around, but it's a painful process.

Don't click on the particular forum.  Click on the latest topic/post, in the second column.  That will open that thread.  To see the next topic, click on next topic at the bottom of the page and it will open. 

Kinda clumsy, but for those who are wanting to check things out, it will get you around the "bug".

[skunked_again]

Are you certain it was a virus? Avast peggs certain cookies as the "Real Media" virus, in which case it isn't a virus at all.

Nonetheless, if there's an ad running a rogue script, it could be causing the issues on the forums. So if anyone reading this gets a "virus warning", PLEASE let me know exactly which ads are appearing on your screen (including the ones on the very bottom). The more people that report it, the better we can narrow down which ad (if any) is throwing the error.

Thanks for your help!

Glenn

my avast never did a thing, which makes me think that if there was a virus it was a poor effort.

The a/v software not doing anything can also be a BAD sign!

i dunno..........(knock on wood)..its never failed me yet.

i think the whole thing is a funky server problem.

[Glenn]

So it blocked a 2-year-old "virus" that's is only carried by pdf files?  There aren't any pdf files on this site - including banners - so I'd say your bit defender is throwing erroneous errors. 

Geeze guys, you're killing me!  Quit speculating. I HIGHLY doubt it's any ad.  I'm sure there's a script error somewhere that's causing your anti virus programs to "detect" very old, inert, viruses.  Quit freaking out and spreading rumors.

[skunked_again]

So it blocked a 2-year-old "virus" that's is only carried by pdf files? There aren't any pdf files on this site - including banners - so I'd say your bit defender is throwing erroneous errors.

Geeze guys, you're killing me! Quit speculating. I HIGHLY doubt it's any ad. . I'm sure there's a script error somewhere that's causing your anti virus programs to "detect" very old, inert, viruses Quit freaking out and spreading rumors.

not kissing the *** here but i agree. a glitch and nothing more.

[florida strain]

any idea as of how long it will take to fix???

[Dan:]

Not spreading rumors, just telling you what happened.

The timing just seemed VERY odd.

[Glenn]

Not odd at all. If there's a script error that's causing the problem, and that same script error is causing the false positive, then of course it will happen at the same time.

FOR ANYONE WHO RECIEVES A "VIRUS WARNING": Please send me a copy of the report you're recieving as well as the exact URL where you get the warning. Please also list off the ads you're seeing on the page when you get the warning.

So far nobody has stepped forward with any information. So don't think somebody else will do it.

[Glenn]

Ok folks, here's the update:

I take virus threats very seriously - especially those that could affect our visitors.  I will not allow this site to infect anybody's computer, and have - and will - do whatever it takes to ensure the security and privacy of our members. In the 14 years we've been on the Web, we've only had one incident that was corrected immediately.

About six months ago, I tried a different ad network for only a few hours, and they did deliver an ad containing malicious code. So I removed the entire network immediately and have never used them again.  This was an isolated incident that affected 9 members. BassResource has never had such an issue before or since.

Along those lines, we scanned the site for malware and didn't find anything. As for the server having a virus, this is not the case.  There are there no known viruses in the wild for linux (only a dozen or so have been written, and none of them work on updated machines like ours).

That said, we're still going to run a scan on our entire server, but it will not likely find anything, and the scan will take as long as eight hours to finish.  The scan will also drive the load on the server up significantly, and will cause the site to slow down.  So in case you experience slow load times, now you know why.

Some of you have hinted that it's a virus from an ad. Google and Microsoft are pretty good about keeping malware from being delivered through their ads, so I'm not sure that's the issue.  It's certainly possible, though.  I have been in contact with both networks and they are looking into it.

This is more likely a script error on the forum software. We have examined this error in the forums and in the backend.  We rebuilt the indexes and examined the databases (about 10 times now).  I don't find any errors or problems on the server.  Neither I nor the host provider have changed anything recently on the server.

I have also been in contact with the developers of the forum software.  They are looking into the sheer size of membership and posts as a possible issue.  It's possible we may have hit an upper limit somewhere that is causing the error.  It seems to occur only when we have a lot of folks logged in at one time, so they're looking into that as well.

That's all I have for now.  Again, if you have any more "virus alerts", please pass along as much information as possible.  But please understand it's unlikely there are any real threats to be concerned about.  I would have shut the entire site down already if I had any reason to think there was a possibility of infecting your computers.

Glenn

[.dsaavedra.]

i'll send you the virus alert i received. i don't remember any ads that were on the screen when i received it though.

[aut0]

Glenn: I think you're right about the virus thing, especially with the viruses mentioned and their delivery (ie the pdf name one.)

That being said, the issue with messages.txt looked like a permissions one to me, as files just don't disappear. (unless someone gained shell access to the server.)

I have some experience. If it's a cPanel server, and you're running linux, drill into it, and look at permissions AND OWNER of the files/your home dir. on the perms you should see lots of 644/755's. On the OWNER of almost ANY/ALL files/folders, it's your username/usergroup. (there are a couple exceptions, I think the cgi-bin is one.)

Only reason I say all this nonsense is, it happens quite often. I love cPanel to death, but that comes and goes pretty well. To my knowledge, they never fixed it as of cPanel X (version 10), which is when I changed jobs.

This problem occurs with many content management systems, forums, and even cPanel file manager itself. When YOU upload/download a file using FTP, you've logged in as yourself. However, if you use a Server-Side script/program such as scripts written in PHP or ASP, since the script itself resides WITHIN THE SERVER, a lot of times the "creator" of the folder/file becomes "nobody@nobody" ("nobody" is actually a user... So to speak.) The creator is also the "owner" and when the perms are set correctly, (755, 644, etc) the owner is the only person who has rights to modify/delete the files. So, you end up with certain scripts like YaBB, PHPBB, Joomla, etc. That can no longer read/write the files they need to, because the user they're logging in as isn't the owner anymore. And yes, it happens at just shy of random.

Anyhow, I'm sure your host is helping you, just thought I'd give you another place to look. Seems like it's running pretty well now though.

[Glenn]

Well it took some sluething, but we found out what the problem was. Turns out it was a corrupted thread in the Everything Else section. We deleted the thread and haven't seen any problems since.

So those "virus warnings" were triggered by the faulty script, which threw a false-positive.

If somebody posted on that thread, it caused the error you all saw.

We were able to reproduce the issues using that thread. 

Problem found and solved!

Glenn