What's going on at CPF?

Thank you for keeping a keen eye on that.

It seems that some bad guy was able to use CPF to infect anyone who visited him, it is logical that administrators take all the time to identify the problem and prevent it from happening again.

My computer used to freeze up about 6 or 9 months ago when on their site. So I quit going there. About 2 month s ago started going back and had no problems. They have some serious security problem. Was never a member.

This is really weird…

This morning I was on this Banggood thread. When I tried to click on another page in the thread it took me to that red page of death. Google Chrome said it was linking to a malicious site.

What’s weird is that the BLF thread page would be taking me to a CPF page in the first place. ? That seemed odd then I saw this thread about CPF being down. I don’t know what’s going on but why would it link me to CPF

Unfortunately the CPF admin seem to lack a bit of “admin” knowledge… CPF has always been slow, some data lost regularly, etc :frowning:

I wish CPF will be back online in no time, with all the issues solved.

Am I reading this right? How to verify if my pc is now infected?

Let’s not get carried away here. There’s no indication that whatever happened to CPF could “infect” anybody. There was a malicious redirect of some sort which Google labeled a phishing attempt, nothing to indicate that anybody was “infected”. It wasn’t even a “virus”.

In order to have any sort of lasting consequences from this, you’d have had to visit CPF, see that you were redirected to some file sharing site instead, shrug your shoulders and just go ahead and put your private data into that strange site you’d never seen before and you weren’t looking for to start with. I hope that most (all?) of us would be smarter than that.

Happened to me also, not sure of the thread I was trying to open, but I opened it another tab and when that was opened it was red death. Closed it and did not try to repeat. Cleaned cookies right away.
Strange.
Hope it was a fluke.

That is quite the understatment, she has absolutly no clue as has been shown again and again in discussions subsequent to the crashes etc… and every benevolent advice/work knowledgeable and qualified people tried to offer were always received very defensively and dismissively.

CPF is currently accessible to read, but attempt to post results in a permissions error.

That’s exactly what I thought when she disclosed the configuration of the CPF’s server…two hard drives, no RAID. Hum, no wonder there’s data loss from time to time…and probably also a reason why forum is so slow when there’s a peak in sequential access.

That’s really a shame because the early CPF was a very nice and friendly community, with flashlight addict meetings and tons of other friendly events, and this place turned into…what you know… over the years.

But to sound optimistic, I found the tendency has been reversed, and I found myself spending more and more time over there lately. Maybe because some mods retired, and/or because the admin is less aggressive with age? Lol!

When something like that happens I believe it would be of great help to +this +site’s admin to let him know just what you clicked on that went to the malicious site, or site warning. Then our admin could decide whether or not he would want to do something about removing the link or whatever. My 2 cents worth (as an admin on an unrelated forum).

Good advice; I just did what you recommended.

If that was directed at me, please re-read my post…. I was saying that if a link +here +took you someplace bad or someplace where a warning appeared, maybe letting this admin know. Then if this admin wanted to he could disable the link to the other place and save someone some possible grief, remove the doubt. The folks on the bad end of the link would have been notified anyhow… that is what happens when Google decides a warning is needed. I was simply stating that, as something I would want to know as an admin on an unrelated site.

Thanks a lot for the heads-up.

OK, so it looks like this post was the source of the warning:

Basically, BangGood hot-linked CPF’s animated smileys, and since CPF was on some blacklists as a phishing risk, the warnings were triggered on some of your browsers. There was no actual danger, and you were not actually being redirected to CPF, just displaying smiley icons that got loaded from CPF’s server.

Very strange! I went to CPF a few months ago and a dialog box which stated it was from www.toykeeper.net came up asking for a password?!? I had a screen shot of it and I kept forgetting to ask about it and ended up deleting it .

I know some of you guys do not care[even though a thread was started].

I am on BOTH BLF AND CPF.

I RARELY and I mean RARELY SEE POSTS ON CPF BASHING BLF. ON THE OTHER HAND BASHING CPF IS CERTAINLY PREVALENT ON HERE!!

Here is the latest posted 37 minutes ago on CPF Facebook.

Kelly Dreller
37 mins
Ok folks - this is what I’ve got…
This issue seems to be a result of Google Safe Browsing which is some BS “Big Brother” that scans sites with some kind of algorithm and determines FOR you whether or not a site is “safe”. I have scanned CPF with several different malware and/or malicious content engines and NONE of them come up with anything. Google Safe Browsing is the only one.
I did some reading up on it and jumped through all of Google’s hoops to get them to do a re-scan and provide me with the specifics of what they find “unsafe”. So now I wait.
Meanwhile - some of you who reported issues previously have mysteriously recovered and are now “clean”. Honestly? I have no idea why! I am still getting the red-screen-of-death myself using Safari on my MacBook… but not on my iPhone.
I know it’s a pain in the butt but for now… we wait. I can either take CPF offline completely while we wait or I can keep it open and you all can deal with the HARMLESS warning screen until I get more information and/or it clears itself. I’m inclined to keep it open.
Now… if anyone actually DOES get redirected to another site and/or can give me a report that contains a redirect URL… PLEASE SEND IT TO ME!!! Truly though… I highly doubt anyone will come up with anything.

Again that sounds like a post was hot-linking to some images (on Toykeeper’s server in this case), and then the site owner made that directory not publicly available anymore.

A web page is just an amalgam of text and images, which can all be from difference sources, not necessarily from the domain of the site that is shown in the browser’s URL bar.

Very interesting SB! I guess I should have brought it someone’s attention at that time. I have been to there site in the past few days and I just chose the option of ignoring the red warning page and I have been able to navigate through their site without any issues. Further, I have not seen any attempts to redirect me to another site.

This is all I can report, from where I sit.

I do not bash CPF because they are not a site I have ever been, nor will ever be, a member of. Nothing against them.
Everything I need is Here, No need to bash any others.

The German sites seem to be chill, they don’t get caught up in this high school BS.

CPF has a web problem, BLF could be next, not need to pile on over nothing.
Grow a set people, show some class.
YMMV

Peace out,
Keith