Forum Maintenance Announcements

[number6]

Forum were down from around 6am until around 9:45am this morning. Sorry about the down time. Issue found and resolved. DB has been repaired. Please let us know if you see strangeness on the forums.

[number6]

An upgrade to software used by the forums has just been completed.
Down-time was around 10 seconds.
This upgrade should not impact service.
Please let us know if you see problems or issues.
If you can't reply, you can email us at defconforums@gmail.com

[The Dark Tangent]

Victory!

As part of the ongoing system maintenance and security improvements I've been using the "least privileged" model, and just now I've managed to get every process needed to run the forums executing as a non-privileged user. Woo! That was necessary because it is the foundation to the next series of security improvements.

For now I'll let things run this way and keep an eye on logs. As usual if you see or notice anything good or bad please let us know to investigate.

[The Dark Tangent]

So far so good, so we will move on to the next set of security enhancements.

[The Dark Tangent]

Looks like it caused a problem with picture uploads. It's been fixed and the hunt continues by number6 to find other issues.

[number6]

Minor update to software forms uses. I don't anticipate any problems. No new features. Please let us know if you see problems by replying here or sending us an email with the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page.

[number6]

Work was done to clean up issues related to improved security preventing new avatar and new attachments from being made available to browsers.
Please let us know if either of these re-surface or if the applied fixes break other things which were working.
Thanks!

[number6]

Major OS and software upgrade completed on DEF CON forums. Please let us know if you see issues with the forums.

[The Dark Tangent]

Minor tweaks:

• brotli dynamic compression default changed from 6 to 7
• Remaining static files compressed with brotli level 11
• Finished switching off gzip compression now that we are using TLS and can exclusively use brotli
• Headers adjusted to disable Google FLoC user tracking
• Working on getting more consistent artwork in different sub forums

[number6]

Upgraded a system service on the forums server. Basic testing has not shown any problems with this upgrade, but testing will take a few hours.
Please let us know if you see problems on the forums. If you are unable to post, you can send us an email about the problem you have encountered by using the email address which sent you your forum registration process or using the "Contact Forum Account Support" link at the bottom on the page.
Thanks!

[number6]

Minor change to cookies. Your old session/auth will no longer be valid forcing you to login again.
Let us know if you see issues.

[number6]

Minor forum upgrade. Please let us know if you see new issues since this upgrade. If you could post before and no longer can, please let us know by email: forum@defcon.org

[number6]

Some maintenance completed on the forums server. Please let us know if you see new issues. So far, no problems have been found.

[number6]

More forum maintenance completed. This was more significant than the last upgrade. Please let me know if you see issues.
Thanks!

[number6]

Minor maintenance. Please let us know if you see problems on forums.

[number6]

Minor upgrade to forum software completed earlier today. No problems found. Please let us know if you see issues.