Need quick advice - not time to search much
 

I have had a war start with a member joining up with a bunch of banned members of my site and starting their own forums (on a webs.com) cookie cutter based hosting system.

What began as a political slanging match has turned nasty with various insults and abuses of current members, myself and the moderators escalating.

I have also received an anonomyous message (from a reliable source) that there is a $1000USD bounty up to "take down or corrupt" my site.

I am an experienced server manager from the point of view that I run my own linux server in a secure data centre - I have root access - in fact I built the OS as a hardened Gentoo LAMP server with shorewall and all reasonable security measures taken - like no root for ssh and very strict password and access policies.

Anyway - what is the best approach from the vBs POV should I lock it down in any way - is there something I should consider - other than doing the backup (as I write this) of the database and tree?

I am snowed with the user requests and lots of other work and therefore please excuse me for posting this in this section if it is the wrong place and for not having done a search.

I don't think I need to feel particularly threatened for the reasons I have described above but it is a worry and I want to make sure that I take all the necessary and advisable actions from a legal and self-defence point of view.

Regards,
Will