Thank you to all those who have donated so far. However, we did not make the deadline that the host wanted us to meet. I spent sometime arguing with them a little today because I don't think they gave us enough time.

However, I worked most of today cleaning the two most infected domains that I have on the server. I was successful on manually cleaning them and I'm hoping with those now clean it will minimize what I have left to do. I've received a lot of good suggestions and one of them will be to start consolidating some of the domains that are on the same host. Example: the boards and the Kerth Awards site are on this same server so you may see kerthawards.com go away when it expires and we'll start using kerthawards.lcfibmbs.com. This will help save money in the long run.

I mistakenly marked the last post as an announcement and that's why only Michael, as an admin, was able to reply. This is why I started a new thread.

I will continue to keep you up to date as things happen. I will be spending more time tomorrow working on cleaning up files.

I’m sorry we didn’t make the deadline but thank you for all that you’re doing! It sounds like a lot of work but it’s greatly appreciated.
Hopefully this will never happen again.

Best,
Songbird

Songbird expressed my own sentiments better than I could have done myself.

I only want to state publicly what I had told you in a PM: These boards and the FoLCs that contribute to then have come to mean a lot to me. They have given me both an emotional escape during some very challenging times in my life. I know that lcficmbs has also been the springboard for many friendships, for both me and others.

I know that the boards are not as active as they had been when I first joined, and I know that I myself have not posted as much in recent years as I had previously. Even so, it would sadden me greatly if the only way to see this site would be via the Wayback machine (archive.org).

Thank you for all you do “behind the scenes” to keep the boards running.

- Lynn

Hey Annette,

This sounds like a good direction to go. Please let me know if you need anything.

Sorry you're having to do the cleanup by hand. That sucks big time.

As an aside, as someone with a LOT of domains, the fact that your host wasn't offering a free or low cost virus scan just to protect themselves doesn't say positive things about them.

Tell me about it. We've been with HostMonster for almost 20 years and I would have thought THAT alone would have meant something. We went several rounds on Thursday and yesterday about it with the security support team. I strongly feel this came from their end and they should have been responsible. However, when dealing with low cost hosting they want to nickel and dime you for everything. I did threaten them to leave for HostGator but she got me there because the company also does security for them, too. *rolls eyes*.

That being said, because we've been with them almost 20 years, this is the first time something like this has happened so I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place because, while yes, we've had the occasional outage here and there, this is the first MAJOR issue I've had with them.

For those site I could, I already have a free firewall in place. It won't stop everything but it's better than having nothing at all. I do need to figure something out for the boards, though. I'll skim UBB to see if we can put something in place that doesn't cost us $300.

Thanks!

Thank you for all the hard work you're putting into this. The prices you were quoted sounds like absolute extortion. Especially with as many people still out of work/financially struggling as the pandemic still rolls on. The host should absolutely be taking responsibility for this, especially with this being the first major issue. I wish I was more computer savvy so that I could help or at least offer advice!

Hopefully this is the last update.

Yesterday I finished with the manual cleaning of almost 1000 files. I have asked the host to run the scan again to see if it comes back clean. I think I got it all. I've put some free firewalls in place that will at least give me a warning as soon as something is found so I can take care of it immediately. It's not a perfect system but it's not going to break the bank either.

Thank you for your patience while dealing with this issue.

To borrow a phrase from LabRat: Thanks for all of your hard work on this one (and on everything else you do behind the scenes).

Fingers crossed that all is good now.

I concur, Annette. You have done yeoman's (yeowoman's?) work on this one. Thank you for all your effort above and beyond the call of duty. You deserve a special Kerth for keeping us afloat.

I'm not clear on why anyone would place malware on a fan fiction site, but I suppose there are reasons. Anyway, I assume that it's safe to start posting chapters again. I plan to begin another story around the first of June. (No one dies! Lois and Clark start out alive and stay alive all the way through! I promise!)

To add my thanks to the chorus!

@Terry: sadly (fortunately?), I don't think it was a targeted assault on a fanfic site. This type of thing is done automatically by sniffing out specific installed software with known vulnerabilities, the malware is injected and the server is eventually put into the service of the malware group. Typically, there's no malice involved, just money.

Michael

Thank you very much, Anette.

Michael, my next question would be whether or not the software publishers have made patches available to reduce the chance of a future infection. We don't need anyone stealing our disk space or CPU time for illegal purposes - or even marginally legal ones.

Annette without your help, this website would truly suffer. What can we do to help?

Hi Terry, quite right about that one. It's a bit of a cat and mouse game, though, and I don't want to speculate about the particular perfect storm for this infection to have taken hold.

Michael

Oh wow! I'm super busy these days and haven't been here in a while. I'm so glad I glad you were able to get this figured out. Thank you so much for all your work on the folc sites, Annette! They have been a huge blessing in my life, and therefore you and everyone else here has also Hugs to you all!

I just wanted to pop in to say a huge THANK YOU to both Annette for her massive amount of work on the site and to the message board users who have donated to the cause. We've had a number of very generous donations come in during the month of May, which will all go towards keeping the boards afloat. (Neither Annette nor I take a cut, nor does the money ever go into my personal bank account -- all donations are kept in the PayPal account and go towards paying for the board and associated sites!) We've been having some discussions about our options if we have to do some condensing of the various sites, but for right now -- mainly due to Annette's work on manually cleaning up the malware! -- we seem to be holding our own. So THANK YOU to everyone who is helping us keep the boards alive.

If you made a donation via PayPal, you should have an email from me thanking you personally. If you sent me a check, I have sent you a PM on this site.

And if you haven't made a donation yet, but want to, please follow the link on the front page of the message boards to get to the dedicated PP page. If you don't have PP and need to send a check via US Mail, let me or Annette know, and we can get you my mailing address.

FOLCs are truly the best.

Kathy

Hi everyone! Anette, You are a lifesaver. Thanks for all the amazing hard work you have done. Keep us posted if we need to do something else to support this marvelous forum