Forum accounts being hacked

[Anonymous46790]

Hi all,
I have been having problems with my forum for a while now. My forum has been hacked atleast 3 times now. It has been done so by brute forces me, my admins and other members accounts. How can I stop my forum accounts from being brute forced?Is there a way to lock out an account after a certain amount of failed login attempts?

Thanks,
~Anonymous

[Sanket]

All accounts have that feature i supposed of 9 attempts if i am not mistaken.

Also, read this.
http://help.forumotion.com/t11386-forumotion-maximum-security-for-your-forums
http://help.forumotion.com/t51-internet-security-on-your-forum-habits-to-be-avoided
http://help.forumotion.com/t75418-my-forum-was-hacked
http://help.forumotion.com/t9692-the-utilities-backup-and-restore

[Anonymous46790]

YeahI read them but somehow these hackers are still getting into me and my members accounts, any ideas?

[Sanket]

What exactly do they do? Please give detailed information to better understand. How do you come to know a account is hacked?

[Anonymous46790]

The other day I was on my forum and images were changing. I then logged out and the "Who is online" feature still had my name there and features were still changing. I can only presume they had forced there way into my account. I have now changed my password to a random series of numbers letters and symbils 32 characters long. If the failed attempts is autimatically 8 I have no idea how they got into my account.

[Sanket]

Images, were changing as in?

[Anonymous46790]

They were in my admin panel via my account changing images on all my pages like the banner,background etc.

[Sanket]

Sometimes, our image hosting company can cause such problems wherein the image url's show different pictures.

[Anonymous46790]

No these were deliberate changes in images, they were very organised in the way the images were shown, they had a theme both times.

[Sanket]

In my opinion, its not a hack. The reason i say this is because, when someone hacks it, he first takes control of your admin account. If someone took control of your account, the first thing he would've done been would be change the password of your account & then mess around.

Just changing the images of a skin can be done by any other admin as well. Do you have any other admin?

[Anonymous46790]

Yes, I forgot to mention I was locked out. They blocked my account Aaswell as my IP so I couldn't get in to my forum at all besides the utilities page.

[Sanket]

So how did you manage to get back in??

[Anonymous46790]

Utilities section, I removed the ban list then used the access admin panel tool.

[Sanket]

Well, good for you. If you were able to retrieve it back.

You did not answer, do you have another admin on the forum?

However, no one here can give you a foolproof solution to safeguard your account. Just be careful & follow the tips mentioned in the tutorials i posted above.

[Anonymous46790]

No I do not have a 2nd administrator only a backup for me, but thanks for your help anyway.

[Sanket]

Backup for me??

[Anonymous46790]

A second account owned by me with admin powers

[SLGray]

It could be someone has hacked your second account.

[Anonymous46790]

Nope it was definately my first because when I was not logged on the "Who is online" feature showed that my first account was logged in

[SLGray]

Sometimes it will show that you are online after you log off.