Someone on the HeroMachine Facebook page (like us if you haven't already!) is reporting that when they go to HM3 in any browser, they're seeing this instead:
Is anyone else experiencing anything like that?
Sponsored Links (which Premium Members will never see):
No!
Can’t say I have. I’ve seen cash back ads on the top ad banner next to the Featured Character thing, but apart from that, can’t say I have.
I am seeing that. I thought I was in a parallel universe!
Well poop. I wonder if somehow I got hacked?
I’ll check into it, thanks dblade.
Glad I’m not the only one seeing weird stuff (sort of).
I’ve been reluctant to nuke my cookies since I haven’t backed everything up as text, though. For what it’s worth my friends in the same area are not having the issue so I’m not sure what the targeting is. I was pretty freaked out since it is mostly about student loans, though it’s in total Engrish/gibberish.
However, the link to this blog post works (in spite of their being a spam sidebar). Do you think you could post a short/obfuscated link to the actual Heromachine 3 page? If this is a malicious redirect posting your own redirect links could be a bandaid for those of us who just want to keep making characters.
I have been. I thought you guys had been taken down completely; it only worked when I went through heromachine.com and then following the links on the website.
I found that when I clicked in through a google search, it directed me to a payday/hacked site, but when I typed in the url manually it worked. I hope that helps??
That’s very helpful, thank you Jesse!
Thanks for the info, everyone. I had DreamHost run a scan, and implemented the changes they recommended. I also have signed up for StopTheHacker.com and they too are scanning the domain to see what’s going on. That’ll take a day so hopefully I’ll know something tomorrow.
Jesse’s right, if I do a Google search for “heromachine”, I see the Loan stuff as part of the page titles. No clue what’s up with that but it definitely points to the site being hacked somehow in some way. Aargh!
A bit late, but, no, I haven’t got anything of the sort… I also type in the URL manually.
OK, here’s the update.
I’ve reset every password possible on the back end, changed my own user name in WordPress, updated the whole installation, installed a security plugin and scanned several times to remove malware, signed up with StopTheHacker, and reset every single user’s password since it appeared part of the intrusion was happening in the “forum-image-uploads” area of the site.
The original person who reported the problem wrote in this morning to say it was fixed, which is a hopeful sign, but I’m going to keep monitoring and scanning to be sure.
My apologies for the irritation and frustration, and thanks for the reports.
If anyone can’t get their password reset, let me know.
Jeff this has puzzled me for awhile there are characters in the hall of fame promos that show up in the promo but not in the hall of fame page
James, at some point I changed the code on how the Hall of Fame works. I need to go through and make sure I didn’t miss transferring any over; if you know of some in particular, let me know.
there was one i really liked it was a cyborg verson of Casey Jones from tmnt i forgot the characters name but i see him in the promo and not in the hall of fame
This might be a bit late, but every time I would Google Search HM it would take me to this MK Loans site. I had to always type in the full URL. I thought I accidentally clicked an ad, but it happened for every other HM machine as well. Glad it’s fixed now. Thanks Jeff!
James, Kaldath gave me the clue about the Hall of Fame on the forum a month or two ago – thanks, Kaldath. It’s actually a category, not a single posting, which means that it runs to several pages. At the bottom of each page, on the left, is a tiny link that says “<- Older posts". Click that to see the next page.
I can't find a cyborg answering that description, but hopefully you can.
Is this the one you are looking for ? http://www.heromachine.com/2012/01/04/cyber-ninja-by-sutter-kaine/