Seeing two trends

With the armory debacle, this site getting hit with spam accounts, and a very large forum I have belong to I see a disturbing trend. Either spam accounts or back door meddling is the offense of choice. The large forum im on has been infiltrated in the background with a style similar to the spamming we saw on the armory. 

It looks like low tech and higher tech efforts are being made to mess with gun boards. They either attack in the open pages or get in the back room and mess with operations. 

I’m no computer guy so motive could be to use the site for nefarious activity or just to get the gun sites to break.  It is getting very old dealing with it to the point I have all but given up trying to add content.

The 2 other firearms forums I’m on have not had anything publicly posted about being cyber attacked even when ask the administration replies no. They have to individually approve new members so that might be partially why. Same with the primary knife forum I’m on, have to be approved by staff before even getting past the entrance page, you can’t even str the forums it’s locked down so tight



How much of the armories problems were due to the owner not giving a shit and refusal to take the steps needed

[RocketFoot]

He wasn't doing any security or maintenance updates on the software either...I think the server updated to a new PHP version and that was what finally killed the forum. I run a big Invision forum and I know that you have to keep up with updates or it will just quit working one day! Heck, if he abandoned it, he may not even know or care that it is down!

I belong to 4 other larger gun forums, one of which was by invitation and none of them have had any of the sort of attacks the Armory had and never once had to shut down. Coincidentally, they all seem to be running the same forum software. I don’t know what the software is but they all look and work almost exactly the same.

BTW, I never heard from or got a refund from Neal.

Terry

With the armory debacle, this site getting hit with spam accounts, and a very large forum I have belong to I see a disturbing trend. Either spam accounts or back door meddling is the offense of choice. The large forum im on has been infiltrated in the background with a style similar to the spamming we saw on the armory. 

It looks like low tech and higher tech efforts are being made to mess with gun boards. They either attack in the open pages or get in the back room and mess with operations. 

I’m no computer guy so motive could be to use the site for nefarious activity or just to get the gun sites to break.  It is getting very old dealing with it to the point I have all but given up trying to add content.

I think that was both an opportunity to steal a bunch of gun owners info, and a way to mess up what they would consider right winger resistance groups. I would not at all doubt they targeted armory specifically because it was a gun board. It sure didn't help that the one person that could do something about it, and the one directly under him both basically threw their hands up and said screw it and all the guys too.

I'm beginning to think it's not a nefarious plot but for profit. With limited reading on the subject, it appears that they set up the computer to send millions of spam emails automatically. If they're able to get a tiny percentage of recipients to click the link they get a commission.
While that's email, I imagine it works the same on forums, blog comments, etc. I looked at several new "members" profiles and I see signatures that are links. I see a fair amount of spam in the comments section of news sources as well, so it's not just firearms forums.

After thinking about it, Tow getting hacked and banning himself at the armory doesn't fit the profit scenario, so it may be more than that.