We are really, really sorry about being offline for so long. This is what happened.
A staff member had their login credentials stolen (nothing to do with ECF), and as a result a hacker was able to load some malware onto the site. This resulted in a possibility that passwords may have been stolen from those logging in at ECF. You may have seen a blue Announcement at the top of the forum and this was related to the malware attack - while that announcement was displayed, there is a small possibility passwords may have been compromised.
After exhaustive analysis of our servers and the software we use, we believe that what happened is the following: another, well known, website was recently hacked and many thousands of username/passwords combinations were stolen. This is not possible on our platform since password storage is encrypted. We believe that our staff member was using the same password/username combination on ECF and on the compromised website, and so it was a simple matter for the attacker to do a google search for his username, which he found on ECF. The staff member's account did not have access to any personal details of any members, and our Admin accounts are strongly protected by IP restrictions.
We don't think many logins (if any) were stolen but even so it is better to change all passwords to be safe.
At the same time, we have been planning a server migration. Traffic has increased tremendously and we now need new resources to cope. A change of equipment would have resulted in further downtime in a week or so - so the decision was taken to bring the migration forward and avoid going offline again in a few days.
Also note that some of the downtime experienced individually is attributable to local DNS propagation issues. Because we have moved to a new host, our DNS has changed. If you are using OpenDNS or GoogleDNS IPs on your router for the DNS IP service, you get the new network location update within 10 minutes. Some other DNS services, such as those on suboptimally managed ISPs, take much longer - maybe up to 24 hours. We are also seeing this with some mobile services.
Now we are back up online with a new server cluster at a new host and ready for the huge traffic that the global increase of vapers to at least 20 million will bring just in the next couple of years.
Thank you very much for your patience!
Tips
- To make sure you're looking at the latest version of a page, hit F5 (at top of keyboard) or Ctrl+F5 (Control and F5 at the same time, control is at the bottom left of the keyboard). This means 'get new version' or 'rebuild the page from scratch'.
- If using Tapatalk, download the latest version - the old versions wreck some site functions.
- To clear a browser of old site info that is now incorrect, delete all private data. You need to flush all cookies, cache, history.
- Never, ever use the same password on different websites. Just don't. Use a real password (gibberish with numbers, letters, upper case letters), and use a different password on every site. This means you will probably need to use a password manager app like Roboform, KeePass, LastPass. You can get a portable version that goes on a USB stick. Make sure to use a master password for the app.
A staff member had their login credentials stolen (nothing to do with ECF), and as a result a hacker was able to load some malware onto the site. This resulted in a possibility that passwords may have been stolen from those logging in at ECF. You may have seen a blue Announcement at the top of the forum and this was related to the malware attack - while that announcement was displayed, there is a small possibility passwords may have been compromised.
After exhaustive analysis of our servers and the software we use, we believe that what happened is the following: another, well known, website was recently hacked and many thousands of username/passwords combinations were stolen. This is not possible on our platform since password storage is encrypted. We believe that our staff member was using the same password/username combination on ECF and on the compromised website, and so it was a simple matter for the attacker to do a google search for his username, which he found on ECF. The staff member's account did not have access to any personal details of any members, and our Admin accounts are strongly protected by IP restrictions.
We don't think many logins (if any) were stolen but even so it is better to change all passwords to be safe.
At the same time, we have been planning a server migration. Traffic has increased tremendously and we now need new resources to cope. A change of equipment would have resulted in further downtime in a week or so - so the decision was taken to bring the migration forward and avoid going offline again in a few days.
Also note that some of the downtime experienced individually is attributable to local DNS propagation issues. Because we have moved to a new host, our DNS has changed. If you are using OpenDNS or GoogleDNS IPs on your router for the DNS IP service, you get the new network location update within 10 minutes. Some other DNS services, such as those on suboptimally managed ISPs, take much longer - maybe up to 24 hours. We are also seeing this with some mobile services.
Now we are back up online with a new server cluster at a new host and ready for the huge traffic that the global increase of vapers to at least 20 million will bring just in the next couple of years.
Thank you very much for your patience!
Tips
- To make sure you're looking at the latest version of a page, hit F5 (at top of keyboard) or Ctrl+F5 (Control and F5 at the same time, control is at the bottom left of the keyboard). This means 'get new version' or 'rebuild the page from scratch'.
- If using Tapatalk, download the latest version - the old versions wreck some site functions.
- To clear a browser of old site info that is now incorrect, delete all private data. You need to flush all cookies, cache, history.
- Never, ever use the same password on different websites. Just don't. Use a real password (gibberish with numbers, letters, upper case letters), and use a different password on every site. This means you will probably need to use a password manager app like Roboform, KeePass, LastPass. You can get a portable version that goes on a USB stick. Make sure to use a master password for the app.
- this could've taken much longer....
hackers...... 
from his fb post
