Over the 10+ years of this site, I have had to deal with occasional hackings by Russian and Chinese groups. These hackings were never maliciously aimed at me or PFA. They were part of large, organized hacking efforts to hijack sites and use them as either spam servers or zombies. (A "zombie" is a computer taken over by hackers, which is used then to attack or scan other sites.)
PFA is a loosely constructed structure of third party software, public domain freeware, and software/routines I wrote myself. For example, that little messaging box at the bottom right (which only shows on some devices) is a piece of third party software. The chat room we use during radio is (old) third party software which I shoehorned into working with PFA. The radio appears to broadcast through the forum, but is actually third party software which I integrated into the site.
There are lots of different pieces of software running on the server here -- some visible to you, some not.
The bad part of this is the fact that each of these opens up vulnerabilities to hackers.
A recent hack has been using PFA as a zombie system, and our internet provider has gotten multiple complaints. There is no question that this is a result of a hacking, and they do not believe I am behind the zombie attacks. However, I have been given an ultimatum to fix this, or otherwise PFA will be suspended. I already thought this was fixed a few days ago, but apparently not.
If this happens, you will see a suspension message, and will not be able to access either PFA or our sister site, Vegas Casino Talk.
In addition, other sites I manage such as dandruffpoker.com and toddwitteles.com will also go down.
Here is the plan if this occurs:
1) I will be giving updates on https://twitter.com/PokerFraudAlert
2) I will move all of the sites I manage to a different provider -- first with a temporary page explaining what's going on, and then I'll put everything back as before
3) PFA might be taken down later tonight for purposes of doing backups, but this will only last for about 30 minutes.
This might all take several days, so please be patient if it happens.
I am hoping I can take care of this matter and a provider switch will not be necessary. Of course, even if I do switch providers, I'll need to kick the Russians off, because this problem will occur all over again once I restore from the backup.