Spammers hitting the vbseo script?

Ok, a couple of days ago, my server got hammered hard enough to be completely inaccessible for about 16 hours.

My support folks said that a lot of mail activity was running, identified my development site where I have a test liscence for vbseo set up, pointing to the vbseo script, looks like.

In other words, a whole mess of these:

Code:

root@easystreet [~]# ps aux |grep lczen
 
lczen 30831 0.2 0.3 39308 6840 ? S 07:17 0:00 /usr/bin/php vbseo.php
 
lczen 30833 0.2 0.3 38628 6840 ? S 07:17 0:00 /usr/bin/php vbseo.php
 
lczen 30835 0.2 0.3 39316 6748 ? S 07:17 0:00 /usr/bin/php vbseo.php
 
lczen 30836 0.2 0.3 39828 6752 ? S 07:17 0:00 /usr/bin/php vbseo.php

We suspended the account (which actually required a hard reboot, since we couldn't even access the server via SSH to suspend it. Hard core, man.

I'm asking my server support for help (as I want to make 100% sure that's i've addressed the source of the issue before unsuspending the account). Now, I recently upgraded to php 5 on the server, if that makes any difference.

But can I get some ideas as to what I should be looking for in this issue? Help appreciated.

wanted to update: while my managed server support identified the vbseo script as being the problem, it appears it was some other server issues. but since it looks like it was related to the database connection for my vbulletin in some area and all calls to the vb pages hit vbseo script, that's why it was identified.

wanted to make sure i set the record straght here and also note that my vbseo support ticket was responded to promptly with helpful info. go, vbseo!

Glad to hear that you were able to get this issue resolved.