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Re: Some Member Concerns
I am not sure that is the case. The google diagnostic information indicated that some of the links led to pages that downloaded viruses. Monroi was reported to have been hacked so the message may have just been generated as a result of the Monroi link. The google information indicated that the problem occurred on one particular day.
I visited the CFC website during and after the google warnings first appeared and did not get any viruses or trojans or unexplained processes running on my computer nor did my computer behave in any way which would indicate that it had been compromised. Any reasonable web hosting company has protections built in to diagnose and prevent the websites it hosts from becoming infected and infecting others.
The CFC website does not appear to me to be all that complex. You don't shut down your company because of a virus or spyware. You fix it, remove the virus and move on. If it is a particularly nasty piece of malware, then you may have to reformat your computer although in recent years I haven't been finding that necessary as there are a lot of good (and often free) tools to fix the problems without having to resort to that drastic step. Back in the windows 95/98 days when you got above a couple of hundred infections it was often easier just to reformat.
If this happened to me at work and I didn't have the website back up and running in a few minutes (or in extraordinary circumstances a few hours), I would justifiably be fired for incompetence. Does GK Gillin know what they are doing? Do they need help? Are there backups of the website?
Non-computer people might be taken in by explanations that the site needs to be taken down for maintenance but that doesn't fly for anyone who knows anything about IT.
A decent website rebuilt from scratch will take from two weeks to several months to complete depending on the complexity of the website and the competence and resources brought to bear on it. A very simple site may be up in a day or two but I don't think that is the situation here. It seems very strange to even suggest this option. Its sort of like someone's wife getting a 24 hour flu bug and the solution being to replace the wife with a new one. What are you going to do when wife number two gets the same flu bug?
Put the old one back up until the new website is ready. If you don't have the old site backed up then download the files you have and set up the hacked website files on a throwaway $120 computer which you can reformat as soon as you solve the problems with the current website.
FactoryDirect.ca has refurbished Dell 270/280GX computers that are perfect for this purpose.
Run diagnostics and some of the better anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware tools on this throwaway computer and find exactly which files (if any) on your computer and hence the web site have actual problems. Fix the problems or make the problem pages unavailable temporarily. Download the fixed website to a thumbdrive or usb hard drive and load it back onto the web server.
Move the website to a web hosting company with better security. The cost can be as little as $7 a month (POWWEB when I looked a few months ago) and shouldn't exceed $40 a month if you have a hosting company that nickles and dimes you depending on the features you want to access.
Originally posted by Bob Armstrong
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I visited the CFC website during and after the google warnings first appeared and did not get any viruses or trojans or unexplained processes running on my computer nor did my computer behave in any way which would indicate that it had been compromised. Any reasonable web hosting company has protections built in to diagnose and prevent the websites it hosts from becoming infected and infecting others.
The CFC website does not appear to me to be all that complex. You don't shut down your company because of a virus or spyware. You fix it, remove the virus and move on. If it is a particularly nasty piece of malware, then you may have to reformat your computer although in recent years I haven't been finding that necessary as there are a lot of good (and often free) tools to fix the problems without having to resort to that drastic step. Back in the windows 95/98 days when you got above a couple of hundred infections it was often easier just to reformat.
Originally posted by Bob Armstrong
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Non-computer people might be taken in by explanations that the site needs to be taken down for maintenance but that doesn't fly for anyone who knows anything about IT.
This definitely causes inconvenience to the membership. But CFC is doing what it can to get the website back up and running as soon as possible, and back to good health, so there is no danger to members accessing the site. We do not yet know how extensive the damage is. We don't know if a new website is called for under the circumstances - apparently this option is being reviewed as to whether it is necessary, or perhaps preferable.
In the meantime, CFC has to ask members to be patient while the difficulty is dealt with - the problem is not of CFC's making, and it is working on the solution. Hopefully, as Vlad has said above, it should not take a long time to rectify, and it would obviously be more timely if a new website is not required.
FactoryDirect.ca has refurbished Dell 270/280GX computers that are perfect for this purpose.
Run diagnostics and some of the better anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-malware tools on this throwaway computer and find exactly which files (if any) on your computer and hence the web site have actual problems. Fix the problems or make the problem pages unavailable temporarily. Download the fixed website to a thumbdrive or usb hard drive and load it back onto the web server.
Move the website to a web hosting company with better security. The cost can be as little as $7 a month (POWWEB when I looked a few months ago) and shouldn't exceed $40 a month if you have a hosting company that nickles and dimes you depending on the features you want to access.
I hope the above goes some ways towards providing you with some responses to the members' comments you listed above. It is not an ideal situation at the moment, but I think there are credible answers to current member concerns you have raised. Hope this helps a bit.
Bob
Bob
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