Thanks, AMonk, exactly right.
This wasn't a hack per se. Thanks to the leadership of our own House Genius, Br'er Nolefan, our security is pretty good and we've had few incidents. (This last written by typing with one hand and knocking on wood with the other...)
It was, however, a particularly vile case of membership abuse. Despite our efforts there is always a certain amount of trust involved in admitting new members, and in this case our trust was violated. I WAS able to block a number of incoming bogus member apps, and continue to do so as more are coming in, but those two managed to fly in under the radar.
And no, we've never witnessed anything quite like this before at The Saloon. We're pretty blunt about making it clear from the beginning that no commercial interest is going to be using The Saloon as their bitch, and that scares most of them away.
We've had a few individuals join up and instantly starting pimping a business, but they were pretty easy to contain by heaving the offender into the nearby reeking sewage-filled canal and deleting their posts from the forum. But this was the first time we've had a "multi"-user, multi-thread commercial attack like this. They're rampant on other such forums, but this was our first. I'd like to say it's the last, but guys, the incoming attempts are constant and sometimes pretty clever...or, like this one, are not at all clever but just don't get seen at first.
To say the internet is a jungle is being unfair to jungles...it's more like a pit full of deadly reptiles. Security only gets harder and more important as time goes by...and we rely on you Members to help us keep the weasels at bay. If something just doesn't smell right to you, let the management know right away!
