Ulead's Forum Was Down and Now Back Online

For any of you wondering what happened to the Ulead forum there is now a notice up indicating the board was attacked with "malicious scripts" and they are attempting to back up and restore.

Hi Lance, thanks for the update. I miss the VS forum. :(

For any of you wondering what happened to the Ulead forum there is now a notice up indicating the board was attacked with "malicious scripts" and they are attempting to back up and restore.

The Official Ulead User Forum was hit by a hacker on 5 October 2006 and affected their entire web server. A couple of the forum moderators have got together to provide a temporary help forum here:

http://www.grandpasgraphics.net/forum/index.php

Steve Jones.

Many Thanks, Steve!!!

:) Thank you Steve, do we need to re-register or can we use are regular Ulead user name and password? :confused:

:) Thank you Steve, do we need to re-register or can we use are regular Ulead user name and password? :confused:

Hi Joe..

Yes you will need to register. You can use the same user name etc.. as you do on Ulead's forum. This is one that Steve and I put together rather quickly. It strongly resembles Ulead's, just to add to the comfort of using it. There's not much of anything yet, and is not designed as a replacement for Ulead's.

So if you have a problem you can also give us a try too...

..Ron P.

Every user of Ulead Video Studio and Media Studio needs to contact Ulead's Customer Service http://www.explorecommerce.com/publisher/1231/5440.htm and urge the company to prioritize the restoration of its user forums, with databases intact, ASAP.

Moreover, everyone who has a technical problem with a Ulead product should file a report with Ulead Tech Support http://www.ulead.com/tech/techsupport.htm. This will demonstrate the value that the User forums have in reducing Ulead's tech support budget!

John

John,
I'm sure Ulead is working diligently to restore the forums. Innundating them with email is not going to make that process go faster. Why not give them reasonable time to get things back to working order before taking drastic measures?

I'm sure Ulead is working diligently to restore the forums. Two weeks ago, I said the same thing to myself. However, rolling back a database is not rocket science and should have been completed by now, including upgrading the software to prevent further attacks.

The fact that some users have been able to create a whole new forum structure (sadly, without a database), while waiting for Ulead to fix the old one, is proof that it just isn't that difficult. However, a new forum is not the answer because the old forum contained a wealth of user experiences, valuable tutorials, and "rules of thumb" for successful video editing.

Bottom line, the old user forums are essential for new and experienced users, alike. Restoring them has to be prioritized. Ulead seems to be asleep at the switch ... :eek:

John

Hi Joe..

Yes you will need to register. You can use the same user name etc.. as you do on Ulead's forum. This is one that Steve and I put together rather quickly. It strongly resembles Ulead's, just to add to the comfort of using it. There's not much of anything yet, and is not designed as a replacement for Ulead's.

So if you have a problem you can also give us a try too...

..Ron P. :cool: Thank you Ron. :)

Ulead seems to be asleep at the switch I guess I've worked with forums and in business enought to know there is usually a lot more behind the scenes than appears. If the forum posts were contaminated with script, they will have to be cleaned or erased. Who knows how difficult or easy that process is. My guess is that it isn't as easy as it sounds. What if they decide that between the malicious script kiddies and the impatient users that the forums are too much trouble to support? Where will the user community be then? All I'm saying is give them a chance to fix it.

If the forum posts were contaminated with script, they will have to be cleaned or erased. Standard operating procedure is to identify the point in time before the database was contaminated and use that as a good first rollback point. Even if the following posts are lost, (I doubt more than a week or two) this is not nearly as important as preserving the tutorials, the prior experiential threads and restoring the forum to full functionality, ASAP.

After working with Ulead products for ~ four years, I suspect that the company is not prioritizing the recovery effort and needs some prodding. The software development group is very competent but the support structure has been weak.

How long should we wait before contacting Ulead about the website being down? :confused:

The Ulead User Forums are back in operation as of today, October 23!

Hip, hip hurrah and thank you John for the update. :) :) :)