Nature.ie :: View topic

**Administrator** Joined: 02 Mar 2006 Posts: 302

Website security update

Hi everyone. As the site admin here, our website security is one of my biggest priorities. I just found out about the three offensive "adverts" which were posted in the Cetacean Survey message board area. These messages have now been deleted. Apologies to anyone who seen these. I would also like to pay tribute to the eagle eyes of Martina and Liam and fair play to them for alerting me.

The background to these messages is that malicious individuals and mercenary programmers have created so-called "spam robots" (automatic programs) that continually trawl the internet looking to exploit all websites in order to advertise whatever dodgy services or goods they are selling. Community based websites which have message posting areas are their prime target and our website is no exception.

We had one such incident before a few months ago but the loophole the spam 'bots were using to post was quickly found and shut off. The reason these latest messages got through was because until now the "survey" message board areas been open to anyone to leave messages on. I originally set it this way to save people that wanted to report an animal or whale sighting the hassle of having to login (or join). This approach worked fine until now.

In view of what just happened unfortunately all message boards on the site now require a login before you can leave a message. This means if you are not a member it will be necessary to register with nature.ie first before you can report a sighting in the survey sections.

Folks, if any of ye see something like this again appearing on the site please either text me or call direct to 086 885 4939 so I can sort is as soon as possible.

Thanks for your support and patience.

matt/ siteadmin