by Paul Webster » Fri Jun 25, 2021 8:37 am
No, it's really not that. It is a distributed attack we've had a few times but I very much doubt it's targetted specifically at Walkhighlands; it is an attempt to get users' email addresses from forums like ours but only worked one address at a time and even then required alot of chance - so racked up massive pageview numbers.
We removed the vulnerability years ago (& reported to ICO - some on here may remember) but are probably still on a big list of websites to hit and fish with this particular script in an automated way. Unfortunately although it doesn't expose email addresses, it does generate massive amounts of traffic which then slows us down (as on Monday for a few hours). Whoever runs it has a big international network of machines (probably ghost compromised PCs), so it's very difficult to prevent the traffic spikes from it.