Feb-14-16 - Urgent Account Security - (pjcnet)
I have noticed an unusual number of failed login attempts over the last couple of days. We already had protection in place to prevent too many multiple login attempts and more, however this hacker has been using masses of different IP addresses and despite being greatly slowed down he/she has still managed to run a small, but significant brute force attack.

This attack was spotted relatively quickly and I have now added further protection to greatly reduce any possible failed attempts further. There are however a small number of accounts that I have locked down because of a possible suspicious login. If you are one of these members you will find that you can no longer upload, download or do anything else on your account except browse and send / receive PMs. If you find yourself in this situation please ensure you are logged in from your normal location and change your password to something secure immediately (please see the paragraph below for more on how to do this). One this is done please send a message to the staffbox to confirm and we will arrange to get your privileges re-enabled as quickly as possible.

Brute force attacks are only normally successful when members use weak passwords, especially when the number of attempts are restricted. Do NOT use a word that can be guessed, it's strongly recommended that members at the very least use a random letter and number combination of at least 10 characters (preferably longer) and your username / password combination should also be unique. If you are in any doubt as to whether your password is secure, please change it immediately by clicking the Profile on the Personal menu and scroll down towards the bottom to see the change password section.

Thanks your for your continued support and sorry for any inconvenience.