phpBB admin rights problem

Ferre · 07-04-2004, 06:11 PM

Listen to this, one of my very good friends has absolutely no knowledge of html or websites but does own a site that became actually quite important. he has a phpBB forum on his site as well and now this problem came up:

The dude that was his webmaster, and admin at his forums got fired for interfering too much with the content and abusing the powers he had on my friends boards. Instead of leaving peacefully he took away the owner's admin rights and started to make a mess at his boards and website. Now my friend has called the hosting company on my advice and they have changed all the passwords for the actual ftp and this dude can't do any harm there anymore. I went into his site and, on his request, took out the link to his boards for now but that dude is the only one with admin access and should be removed, (it's the first members account)

What do I need to do to be able to enter the phpBB admin panel again and remove that dude?

Can I take over the admin account? I do have all access we need, ftp and mysql. just don't know how.

Jazzee · 07-04-2004, 06:21 PM

Go to the phpmyadmin and click on the table called phpbb_users. Then hit browse at the top. Find the guy's name who is causing problems and change his user level to 0. Then find your friend's name and set him to 1.

Jazzee · 07-04-2004, 06:27 PM

^That will set the guy back to a normal user account and your friend to an administrator account. Then you can go into the admin panel and ban the guy.

Ferre · 07-04-2004, 06:28 PM

Thanks Jazzee, you rock!

Jazzee · 07-04-2004, 06:29 PM

Ferre · 07-04-2004, 06:31 PM

Yeah, the hosting company already has blocked his ip btw, the account is called "admin" and will be used by more responcable people when I have changed everything.

**fishfreek** · 07-04-2004, 07:22 PM

You can also manually change the username and change the password from phpmyadmin. To change the suername simply edit the username field from 'admin' to what ever you want and save it. To change the password in the type box select MD5 and then type in the plan text password you want and click save. This will then hash the password into MD5. This is how all passwords are stored in the phpbb database.

If this joker knew the password for cpanel, ftp or heaven forbid SSH change them all imedeatly. ALso change the username and pass on the database. Password protect the admin/ folder within phpbb aswell. This is double protection. Then they will not only have to have a useraccount with admin priviliages they will also need to know the new username/password for the admin folder.

Ferre · 07-04-2004, 08:12 PM

Thanks guys, just finished doing it all and the rights of my friend are restored, the dude is out and after some cleaning up all will be back to normal and he found a new webmaster.

Boy what an idiot that was.