we've been hacked!!!!!!
You fellows are right, we got hacked. Happened right when I was on the forum this morning too. Thanks to those that sent email and Charles and Al for calling, I appreciate that.
Turns out what happened was very benign. The fellow could have done a lot worse, so one must be thankful he did not. Apparently, unless one takes steps to secure VB it has holes in it. When we switched to VB the install directory was left open, and, the fellow came in that way. He switched my user name to my Alias so I wouldn't notice, and, changed my admin login to direct to his email. When I logged in I had no admin rights, he changed that, so I couldn't get into the forum to fix things.
Luckily, VB is a highly supported forum and there are guns for hire all over to help solve problems. A programmer from Australia responded to my request for assistance and knew about this common security issue. Within about an hour he had it fixed up for a low cost and plugged some holes in VB as well.
While the hacker was in VB he used the mass emailer to email his message to most of the forum members. He does not have your email address, but when he used the mailer the mail looked like it came from me. Everything should be okay and your privacy has not been compromised unless he had it out for you and looked your profile up from the AdminCP directly, which we doubt he did.
Again, sorry for the troubles and I hope we avoid hacking in the future, but it could have been much worse.
Ron
