Just two days back I found a mail in my inbox informing that my forums got hacked I am not giving away the url. The guy who hacked it asked me for money like $300 to get me back the pass and database. I thought this to be strange.. plus I hardly have time to take care of my forums and I never placed any ads on it too to get me any income. So I just replied him like this. Thank you so much for taking your time and hacking my forums, its good that you got admin access now. just let me know your godaddy account number and email so that I can push the domain to yours and also as u have the access to database continue with your work of taking care of the forums. just try to pay $15 a month towards hosting and the forums is all yours and you may probably make $300 out of it someday. expecting your reply soon thanks. today morning I got a email from him sending back the pass and other details asking me to keep the forums for myself lol.. well its just funny how I dealt with him.. but sometimes when you act cool and not getting too much excited expecially when your site get hacked you may probably find better ways to get your site back.. hehe.. regards
Lol, hackers don't really need websites, but money! He only wanted the money, and you knew how to deal with him Good for you!
Ahhh... excellent response. Please keep us updated on the reply.... I'm anxious to hear how this turns out.
actually I posted the reponse.. he sent me back the pass and cpanel access details and asked me to keep the site for myself lol.. regards
yup.. plus people phpbb seems to be very vulnerable to hacking.. so try using some other scripts like smf, vbulletin which proved to be more secure..
What a great way to respond to a hacker! Just give him the forums, and when he doesn't want them, he will give them back to you.
But think for a second. Why don't he just kept the forum to himself?? I wonder. I know even though he don't want to manage the forum he just can leave it rotten right. But why he gave it back? That's a million dollar question.
More often than not, hackers will hack something because they can - it's like some kind of urge they have to let the world know they can tweak some code, run some scripts and gain unauthorized access to something. You'll find that in most cases all they look for is a reaction as opposed to finances. I think you handled the situation well
You were able to give such a reply only because you were not active with it. Looking at the database itself, hacker would have realized that he has got hold of an idle site and so was probably forced into giving it back to you. If your forum was starting to build up and you were just getting eyeballs, I doubt your anxiety would have allowed you to give such a response! Anyway, congratulations for getting back.... what belonged to you! Regards, RightMan
that is true! but the forums is not doing so bad though.. I used to get like 500 uv a day.. but still I am not in to it hehe..
Maybe he thinks he can hack you again after a while when the forum will become bigger, and ask you again to pay for it. Try to improve your security. If he hacked it once, he can hack you again in the future...