Security leaks might
be a big problem for any page
using a message board. Hackers may actually make use of
your communication
board to go in and change things on your website
. This has happened to me at least four times. Once an iframe was added to every single page of one of my very large sites. Thankfully, I had it completely backed up, so all I had to do was send the pages back up to the server. Twice, the front page of one of my sites was hijacked. The entire content of the front page was replaced by some note from a hacker stating he had been there.
The last time one of my sites had to be taken down to prevent the server from crashing. After calling my web host they were able to tell me my communication
board was the cause of the problem. I used, and still do on some sites, the phpbb communication
board. It is one of the most popular boards on the internet, and its free of price
. The web host tech told me that the problem was that a virus of sorts had been placed onto the server, through the message board, in the communication
board folder, and was calling out to other servers causing a major load on my web hosts server. To fix the problem the web host technology
found the file and deleted it. After that, all I had to do was update to the latest version of phpbb and so far so good.
If you make use of
a popular message board like phpbb you absolutely need to contruct
sure youve always got the latest version. The more popular a communication
board is, the more hackers are likely to strike. Perhaps the familiarity is the problem or maybe the hackers know they might
get a lot of bites going after a widely used board. As of this writing, the most current version of phpbb is 2.0.15. As the phpbb guys are always security conscious they have added to this version a re-authentication to access the administration panel.
Forums are a very important part of a web page
, but they may be the downfall if your board code
is not updated on a regular basis.
