Howard Kidnapped?

Richard76 · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:46 am Post subject: Howard Kidnapped?

I just tried to log on to HoFo to check out the Smartphone Forums and I think Howard has been kidnapped...or at least hijacked!

Whether I try to log on to the main site or the forums, it immediately redirects my browser to a Turkish website, which I can not read. However, when trying to log on to Howard Chui's main website, it redirected me to a different page first where I could make out the English word HACKERS at the bottom of the page.

I hope Howard is ok!

Jerry Raia · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 9:52 am Post subject:

Yep, sure looks like it. Shocked

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Mike Temporale · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:27 am Post subject:

Eek!!! Not good. Sad

I just sent this over to Howard. Hopefully everything works out ok. Confused

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Richard76 · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:39 am Post subject:

Funny thing is I posted the same thing over at Pocket PC Thoughts and they say everything is fine now. I cleared all my cookies, cache and histories but I still get taken to Turkey.

By the way, did anyone else try logging on to howardchui.com and see the first page with the word HACKERS at the bottom in red?

Edgar · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:43 am Post subject:

Yup, i ljust posted at PPCthoughts too in your thread. hofo loads then jumps to the turkish page, as does Howard's page.

It looks like a redirect from one of the ads - Howardchui.com goes to the same turkish page after a few seconds

If you watch your status line at the bottom you'll see his page load, then as the ads load you can see it pop up and change.

Might be that one of the ad servers was hacked, if true, it can affect us here if we use any of the same corrupted ad servers.
Also note, many ad services have multiple servers that are either round robin or geographically load balanced. Therefore some people may be redirected and others get the service normally.

Mike Temporale · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 11:11 am Post subject:

Richard76 · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 1:25 pm Post subject: Howard is Back!

I just checked out HoFo again and it appears that everything is back to normal. Good job too. I really didn't want to try and learn Turkish.

Edgar · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:24 pm Post subject:

Looks like he stripped some ads. Could it be I surmised right?

I'm all a titter! Can someone Email my wife as a third party and tell her I was right? She won't believe me!

My gosh, that's like twice in the last 8 mos!

Mike, can you ask Howard what caused the problem? Now I'm curious.

Richard76 · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:52 pm Post subject:

Yes, I am interested too. After seeing that one page with the word HACKERS in red at the bottom, I was worried about new viruses too. The funny thing is that I didn't see that page when logging on to howardforums.com, just howardchui.com. And it only came up for one or two seconds and then went right to the Turkish page with the flags.

Edgar · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 3:01 pm Post subject:

Yea, I saw that too. I didn't try hofo and hc.com until after I set up activeX and java to be off (with warning); no auto download, defender at high, etc

I didn't get any warnings so they weren't dumping any code, but thats a good point, they easily could have. Or a new hack Sad