Forums Under Attack from Russia & other Foriegn/Domestic sites.

[Gus]

Warning! We have received several PMs/emails from members stating that they have been advised by administration that others have tried to log in 5 times using their username & have been locked out for a period of time.

This is automated & built in to protect against exactly this type of attack. We can say at this stage we are not aware of any attack being successful on this site!

These attacks are happening to many other forums too! So be aware on them also.

What you can do is be aware this is happening and your Password is protected & a strong one.

If any member is hacked please let Admin know ASAP!

Gus.
On behalf of the Admin Team.

[Nik]

Most people are probably aware what makes a strong password now, and I'm not sure if the forum has specific guidelines but some basic guidelines suggest having a minimum of the following:
1. Minimum of 8 characters in length
2. Contains at least 3 of the following:
- Uppercase Letters
- Lowercase Letters
- Numbers
- Symbols

Also avoid using dictionary words, or if you do alter them such as Password could be written as Pa55w0rD.

[Pauly Faulkner]

That's what I do with my passwords. Use nicknames instead of common names and add a capital letter in there with a numner as well.
With capitals it's a good idea to add them through the word as well I.e "PaUly" instead of just "Pauly" for example, or as Nik kindly pointed out, use a number as a letter I.e "PaU1y".

In saying that, my forum password is shocking in this regard and never bothered me as such because I have no delicate personal information stored here. Probably best I rectify that immediately anyways.
My passwords for email, facebook etc are all over 12 characters (facebook is well over 12characters lol) and each password is different between them.
It's also a good idea to run a one off scan with kaspersky tdsskiller and combofix to fix any registry settings that malware may of caused and also to remove any rootkits and keyloggers that maybe present. Both are 100% free to download and use.