My phpbb forum just went blank!

[wilson]

Hi All,

I hope I am posting this in the right section.

For no apparent reason, my discussion forum that is based on phpbb just disappeared from cyberspace.

All I got was a blank page when the URL was accessed. I repaired the tables via mysqladmin and nothing worked. The powweb staff on the IRC Chat could not find out the reason why too.

In the end, I had to reload the backup to solve the problem.

Has anyone encountered this before? Could it be the work of a hacker?

Thanks in advance,
Wilson

[IanS]

Could be the work of a hacker - in which case change passwords and check you've the latest patches installed for you phpbb forum. Forums are frequently attacked so this could be the case here.

Even if it isn't, changing the passwords wouldn't do any harm.

[wilson]

Hi IanS,

Thanks for your answer. Powweb staff on the chat said there wasn't any telltale signs at all to say its the work of a hacker at all! What a good hacker... :(

Wilson

[stevel]

A blank page is often the result of a PHP error. You can enable PHP error logging in a php.ini - that can be very helpful. I doubt it's a hacker in this case.

[wilson]

Hi Stevel,

How can I go about to do that?

TIA,
Wilson

[songv]

What is your website?

[stevel]

upload http://check-these.info/tools/phpini_php.txt to a password-protected area of your site as phpini.php and then open it in a web browser. Tell it to add this line:

error_log = /www/u/username/phperror.log

where /www/u/username is your web package's path.

[wilson]

What is your website?

Hi Songv,

The forum's located at http://www.greenculturesg.com/forum

Thanks!

Wilson

[stevel]

Loads fine for me at this time.