I'm an administrator and my ID has been hacked

I'm the founder of this site:-
http://cuttingedge2.forumotion.co.uk/

I stay logged in, but because my computer closed down in an irregular fashion today after problems with 'Twitter', I had to log in. I tried my password five times and it wouldn't accept it.

I sent an email to my deputy (Shirina) asking her to reset my password, only to find that she'd been downgraded from administrator to moderator status and couldn't do so. The membership secretary (BowerHolly) has also had her admin status removed. Someone posing as me is still popping in and out of the forum, but thankfully so far hasn't deleted it. I have very strong suspicions as to who is behind this.

The restoration tool didn't help and wouldn't accept the original password which was used to create the account last October. Please help before the forum is destroyed! Thank you.

I've sent a litigation report about this apparent hacking, but I have no clue if this is the correct procedure. At any rate, what Ivan said is absolutely true. Someone has managed to grab admin rights from everyone who had them ... and that doesn't happen by accident! Now there's an 'unknown' at the wheel of our forum, and it could be deleted entirely at any minute.

Speedy resolution of this problem would be most helpful!

Signed,
Shirina, Deputy Admin, Cutting Edge

Sorry, no wish to cause any offence, and thanks for your advice.

I haven't lost my password, it stopped working because it's been stolen, possibly directly from the PC of a moderator.

I tried your second link earlier and it wouldn't accept the original password from when the forum was set up last October.

One must understand here that even if we were able to recover the password, it would only enable Ivan to log into the forum. I can still access the forum, but my admin rights are gone. So are Ivan's, apparently.

Recovering or changing passwords will not solve the fact that our admin rights are gone and that someone else is now in charge of the place. While it is possible that the hacker has not demoted Ivan's account to member status, it is quite likely he has. This assumption is backed up by the fact that the hacker has not done anything else to the forum aside from steal Ivan's account and remove admin rights to everyone. This, of course, means the forum is most likely safe (if the hacker wished to delete it, he would have done so by now), but it would be helpful if those of us who worked to build the forum could have it back as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance.

Lorissa. The person posing as me on the forum hasn’t removed my admin status – they probably can’t do that to the founder. But by stealing my login password, they've prevented me from accessing the site at all. I have sent a PM here to Sanket (Forumotion Administrator) following the ‘lost password’ procedure. Once I’ve been given a new password, I should be able to go in and restore your administrator status.

This hacking hasn’t followed the familiar course, and as my e-address appears not to have been compromised (and therefore the hacker doesn’t have my password), he or she isn’t able to use it to delete the forum, as Rideem3 has pointed out above.

When you get your admin status back, don’t delete the account of the prime suspect, please! We’ll check his IP against that of the bogus Ivan (which should be in the security log) and provide evidence to our hosts of who is responsible for this.

Solved. Thank you.

Hey There Ivan White, Glad to see your issue has been solved.

When your issue is solved you can edit your first post of the thread and click on the "Solved" Icon and resent your post. This will mark this as solved and will inform the Staff that your issue is solved and can be moved.