I tried to log on to Gimptalk today and got hit with a spam window!! Not happy to see that! Has anyone else seen this, too??

hu..not now at the moment everything is fine

Not seeing this either PM; hope your PC isn't infected. If it only happens when you visit GIMPTalk, then that truely is weird.

This might just be a coincidence, but I found a virus yesterday on my machine. It wasn't there the day before as far as I know, so it -might- have come from GT.

While I love GT and the people there, I'm not going to continue posting there if it's down for weeks at a time, is flooded with waves of spam, has no management to prevent or fix problems, is being hacked into once a month, or installs viruses and spyware.

Besides, if someone did hack into GT, and the site doesn't encrypt user data, then whoever hacked into it knows your email, username, and the password you use there.

The best case scenario there is that you might get spam in your inbox. Your worst care scenario is that (if you reuse that password for anything else) they now have the info they need to log into your other accounts at other sites and hijack everything.

Good point Demen.

I have so many passwords, I need my biometrics to remember them all. Plus most are words in very obscure language, with a few that are lengthy acronyms that no one would figure. I also throw in some numbers for good measure.

If they follow a similar pattern, a smart and/or dedicated hacker could just guess them based on the ones he/she does know.

But that's beside the point. I'm just saying that GT keeps going down, there's no support from the admin, and I've had at least two incidents where it tried to put some kind of malware on my computer. The first was embedded in an icon which my antivirus caught, and the other was some kind of hidden script that my browser caught. Those are only the ones that I know of. There may be more, and the virus I got the other day could possibly be related.

Also, considering the security threat I mentioned above due to the site being hacked/attacked at least once a month, I don't think I should be spending time there anymore. Like I said: I love GT, but until it get's it's crap together I don't think I should visit anymore.

I'm not trying to persuade any of you, just clarifying my thoughts.

Not completely abandoning GIMPTalk Demen, but I am starting to migrate some of my favorite tuts here since I am getting a little perturbed with GT going down so much. Why these hackers get off on attacking fantastic sites I don't know. O promised me anyway that Tux will keep that from happening here. Based on what I've seen so far, I do believe that.

GT is a prime hacking target. It's a relatively popular site in the GIMP world but isn't well known to the general public. It's just a simple forum with no strong security measures. And its owners/administrators/'people with the power to make any changes' have all but abandoned it. The mods seem to have to beg them to appear whenever there's a problem.

I wish the Alis would make one of the mods an admin or something. Then at least GT could defend itself or be worked on.

My machine checks out ok and I have had no problems on any other sites. I'm a mod on a health site and we have significant rights to do some stuff, but the Admins are the ones who have to do all the major stuff. I take my hat off to all Admins! Being an Admin can be a boat load of work!

As far i remember GT was attacked by hacker 2 times in the last 4 years

It is not getting down for hacker attack (if not you will see a hacker page as when was attacked ) but simply because the main server is down

I may agree on several critics on GT but i don't like see spreading roumors based on ..no any evidence.

as the other roumors of password and personal data as mail stolen...would be better think twice before spreading paranoia around
Where your evidence of data stolen...how you may be so sure that the security measure are weak..did you found a way to break them ?
If not aagain you should think twice before make such statement:
Even when the side years ago was REALLY attacked by malicious islamic hackers tthat even replace the content with a proclam for jihad no data or password were stolen...why shpuld happen now ?


More confuse spammers (that attack everywhere also here, and that are quickly banned ) that may be a disturbance with malicious hacker spreding malicious viruses is confuce 2 completly different reality.

Spammer are also here, as on the plugin registry (i know because i delete everyday spam from the registry as from GT ) but that is a disturbance not a treath

So if you judge the security measure from the presence of spam you really should avoid to download anything from the plugin registry since has no less spam then GT but is a much better target since there people come to download executives...no to show sig as in gt
(quite hard hide a virus in a sig, very easy do in a exe as are plugins )

(luckily nobody reported malicious file there till now...But that is a good target NOT gimptalk)

sorry PM i see your message only now.. i was not referring to you

1) To be fair, I was conflating hacking attempts with the site being down because I don't actually know why the site goes down so much.

2) It's not a rumor. I mentioned a possible, realistic consequence of GT not encrypting user data. I never said that it happened. That's called "speculating".

3) It think it's safe to say that the security is weak. Weak is subjective, and in the context of a website, usually understood to be comparable to other websites' security strength. I feel completely safe in saying that GT doe not have security measures as strong as a banking website. And, it -has- been hacked into before, showing, if nothing else, that it's possible to break/bypass the security. I don't think a super-hacker would waste time taking down a unknown forum for no reason, so I think it's safe to assume it was a casual hacker. This is the biggest assumption, but one I feel is reasonable. So, having small website that's capable of being hacked into by casual hackers makes be think it has relatively weak security. Simple.

4) You asked me what reason I had to think the site has weak security, and I answered. So I'll ask you why you think that the hackers a few years go didn't make copies of any user data? How can you possibly know?

5) Spammers. Every site has them. I mentioned them once, in passing. What's your point?

6) I judge the security measure on the above, plus the two times (that I know of) GT actually had malware. The one time, I think was just after it came back online, and had infected icons. Every site has icons, but these had some viruses in them. My anti-virus blocked it. It's in my AV logs. If I could remember the day, I could tell you what virus was blocked.

The other time was some kind of clickjacking attempt. Someone installed software into the site that made you click on things you didn't know where there. My browser caught this, and I reported it. I made a post about it too, alerting everyone. It was a few days after that, that all of my posts got deleted, so you can't see it now, but you might remember it.

So, based on all of this, I judge the site to have security issues. It's not wise to connect to, and download files from a server (which is how it displays the webpage) with weak security, whose administrators seem to not care about it.

I doubt its been hacked, i believe its just a very old and inflated server problem.They will probably end up getting a new server. Right now it's working fine.
If it was a security problem at the present Griatch (hope i spelled that correctly), would have told us i am sure. =)

I don't mean hacked right now. I meant hacked in the past and most likely in the future.

right once was hacked by muslism jihadist and once by someone just injecting a virus, that was long ago

As now seems just he problem of a old server running on selfdeveloped sw, maybe selfdeveloped long time ago

And if i remember well the server is, as Ali , in Pakistan a country that maybe not offer connections of the same stability ,power and quality of US or EU
(luckily apparently was not flooded as big part of the country )

What am now doing when I want to go to to GT, is to use Sandboxie. I went on last night in a Sandbox, so that if there was anything going on I would be shielded.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I'm being unfair or even overreacting. But I love your comment. Sandboxie is freaking cool.

Yes; I use to be in the computer repair business. I've seen more then I should and am convinced that there is no Anti-malware that is going to 100% protect you while you are online. Only through virtualization (sandboxie as an example) of your browsing and controlling what you allow to physically get into you PC (registry and files for instance) will you be protected. Haven't seen a malware program yet that has broken Sandboxie; been using SBIE for over 2 years now. I actually double Sandbox (run Sandboxie inside my XP VM; typing this message not in that environment) and create shares between my XP VM and my Win7 OS (where I do all my edits).

I'm convinced that the next major breakthrough in OS security will be complete sandboxing/virtualization of all non-system files and processes.