Major Problem! - Website Broke & VBSEO Not Working After Issue Earlier

Please Help!

I sent an email to all my members earlier. Soon after my website went down. I logged into my hosts and saw my website was locked? I got the following email:

Dear XXX,

You receive today an urgent notice regarding the security of your 1&1 account: Your 1&1 contract has been attacked by criminals. As a consequence, malicious software (malware) has been installed on your webspace representing a severe threat to the security of your private data and others in the Internet!

IMPORTANT: For your own security and in order to prevent further harm, we have temporarily locked your 1&1 contract.

Right now, our security experts are investigating the attack and the nature of the malware. We will get back to you and unlock your contract, as soon as we received their results.

For the time being, we assume that your 1&1 webspace will be reconnected within the next 12 to 24 hours.

We would appreciate your understanding for the necessity of this measure:

Your1&1 webspace presented an imminent danger for the rights and the property of third parties. Your own data was also exposed to the arbitrary access of the hackers.

Last but not least, you were in danger of being held liable for all criminal actions controlled by the malware. It is after these considerations that we processed the lock.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation. We look forward pursuing our good cooperation.

Best regards

Abuse Team

--------------------------------------------------------------

A few hours later i got the following email.

Dear XXX

Your account is not hacked.

Your script vbseo.php is sending mass mails with an 11% bounce rate. You need to make sure all your emails are to a double opt in list, and you are purging bouncebacks. By default, bouncebacks go to /var/log/exim, which you have no access to. You will need to make sure you have configured your script to bounce back to an address you can check, so you can purge all mails that bounce back with permanent delivery failure. I have unlocked your account. Please be aware that the locks are automatic, if we get spam complaints or bouncebacks due to mass mailing from your webspace your webspace will be locked. We do not recommend doing mass mailing from a script in your webspace.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Since the account has been unlocked my website is now broken. The only way i can get it to work is if i delete the .htaccess file from my /forums/ directory and disable the VBSEO Plug-In. I keep getting 'Access Denied' or 403 errors on any page other than my homepage

Please help i'm at my wits end.

Martin

Hello ,

vbseo.php has no capabilities of sending any e-mail. vbseo.php is a wrapper file which all PHP requests are processed through. You need to investigate your server which file they are actually using to send those e-mails.

Access Denied error is directly related to permissions. You need to contact your host to resolve that issue.

Hi Mert,

It was a VBSEO problem. For some reason i had to re-write the forum URLs again in the VBSEO options for it to start working again?

That actually means you have permission and security issues on your server, not vBSEO issue. If your rewrite rules are saved without your knowledge it measn you need to secure your files and server.

Again vbseo.php has no capabilities of sending mass e-mail.