My first post, security question

[houdini]

Hello everyone,

I am a long-time fan of vBulletin as a member of www.asusboards.com.

I am currently in the process of justifying why my college should use it to share info amongst students but some of the not-so-tech savvy administration is raising their arms with concerns that this wonderful "app" might create major security risks.

Does anyone know of any major ones to comment on or ways I can argue that vBulletin won't be any worse than the average college student's website hosted on similar servers from within the University network?

Hope to establish a great working relationship with the members of this community as I have found great information at my current forum board. I have been amazed at the way this method of information exchange has developed to become a very useful reference tool based on the type of info within. Thanks for providing it to the world. It's truly a great piece of work.

:D

houdini

[SaintDog]

In all honesty, it would be as secure as any other forum/website being hosted within their network, if they have poor security, they may have a few issues (with their network, not with vBulletin itself). vBulletin has proven to be very secure, the only instances of hacking are usually when someone uses a short 2-3 letter password then complains when their board is hacked and deleted.

They really should not ask whether or not vBulletin is secure, but if their network is. vBulletin does not open up anything other than a connection on the webserver (as do all websites, nothing unusual :)) so it poses no threat to their network.

As long as they have their security, they will be fine, as with all other websites on the net (with the exception of those that use those short little passwords ;)) :).

- SaintDog

[Brad.loo]

vBulletin also hashes passwords in the DB. IE it dosent store them as clear text, so as long as no one uses a easy to guess password its hard to get them. vBulletin has always been very secure IMO, and the dev team dose a good job of getting bug fixes out ASAP. I see no reason while vbulletin would cause any problems with your college's servers.

[houdini]

I've been a member of AsusBoards.com for quite some time and have only witnessed one or two occasions when it went down. Both of those times, I believe it had to do with the service going down, not a problem with a code.

I guess I will be relaying these sentiments to the administration as soon as possible. Thanks for the responses. If there are other responses I may provide or perhaps some suggestions with regard to ensuring that the network environment is more secure, I'm all ears.

Thanks again.

houdini