Chris is working on this. When he has it solved, he will post the real info. In the meantime, I am not an internet IT guru, but let me tell you what I think is going on.
This is a malware attack. "Someone" is redirecting attempts to reach
www.trailmanorowners.com - redirecting it to a fake website. Although Drupal is legitimate, the page where we are being taken is not the Drupal page. It is a fake page, created by someone for nefarious purposes. This action has happened to many websites recently. It is not limited to TMO, is not part of TMO, and it is not even particularly related to TMO.
If you Google "malware drupal", there are several pages about it.
Here is what I think is happening. When a web site asks you to log in, you fill in your username and password, and click "Login". When you click, the browser sends the info to the site. The first time you visit a site, the browser will offer to remember the info, and fill in the blanks automatically next time you visit the same site. This is a convenience feature - you don't have to remember the username and password yourself. You can accept or decline this offer - the choice is yours.
So far nothing new, right? I like this feature, and I use it on websites like TMO and other innocuous sites. I
don't use it - no one should - on web sites like my bank or credit card accounts.
The purpose of this malware attack is to take advantage of the browser's willingness to memorize your password. In this case, when I try to go to TMO, it brings me to the fake website, where I am invited to sign up for Drupal. My browser doesn't realize that the redirect has happened - it still thinks we are at TMO - so when it sees the request for username and password, it happily fills in my TMO info, and waits for me to click "Login". Again, that's because I have told it to do this when I visit TMO. It is not a bug in the browser, and it is nothing having to do with the TMO forum. But if I had pressed "Login" on the fake Drupal site, my username and password would have been sent to the fake site, and whoever is out there would have recorded it.
One of the basic rules of the Internet is "don't click on anything you don't know". This is a classic example of why the rule exists. In my case, I didn't click, so the bad guys did not get a copy of my password.
So why would anyone care about getting my password for TMO? They don't. But unfortunately, most people use a single password for all the sites they log into. And if I had used the same password for access to my bank or credit card account, and if I had clicked "Login" ... Well, you see where this is going. My bank account would be empty this morning.
Another basic rule of the Internet. If you don't want to use a different password for every site (and most people don't), at least use a special password for financial sites. If your name is John and you want to use "John1234" for fun sites, that's OK. But pick something different (and harder to guess) for sites where a bad guy could really harm you.
I hope no one got hurt here.
Bill
Web Site Problems
Linear Mode
