Sometimes it takes a little thing like someone hacking your site and taking over to wake a guy up from inertia.
I haven’t been around the Redneck much, what with my lousy internet connections, long hours at work away from home, and plain ‘ole burnout. Maybe a little bit of mid life crisis and a spiritual awakening, mixed in with spending as much time as possible with my children and helping out with the aging parents. Top it off with a few possible business ventures and it all adds up to Tim being too busy to breath, let alone surf the net or even keep up with the dang email.
Ernie has been slugging away though, as best he can. There have been some spam issues, but things were getting out of hand. We have had over 61 000 spam now, a lot of those manually deleted. And then the inevitable happened. Someone hacked us. That’s right, even a bar way out in the sticks by Horseguard River isn’t safe from hackers.
I came back to the Redneck Bar and Grill at night, after dark. What the?!! Who put up those banner ads?! We don’t advertise stuff like that here…. I tried to get in but the locks were all changed and my password didn’t work. I asked WordPress to email me a new password. Nada. Then I quietly freaked out while I tried to remember what to do.
Fortunately, I have had a few words with My SQuirreL Database before. I made a new password hash, got the back door unlocked and went to survey the damage inside.
So far I can’t find too much obvious tampering inside. I had all the locks changed, then hunkered down to make more fresh backups and (shudder) upgrade the WordPress installation. Just like before, I lit incence and made a magic circle on the floor, then chanted arcane words in a long dead forgotten language. Apparently that makes a WordPress Upgrade go smoothly. Then I reverted to an old template I found lying around on my desktop, upgraded all of my plugins and deleted a few of the dinosaurs, ate a Mars bar and tried to relax.
I’m thinking we got incredibly lucky. Not only could this hacker have corrupted all of our files or deleted them, he (or she) could have drank all the Blue Beaver Beer. Or swiped the cash drawer float. Or rummaged about in Ernie’s kitchen. Or stole our bar sound system. All they did was lock me out and throw up a few banner ads. I mean really, lame banner ads? Come on!
But that’s it. I’ve had it with spammers, hackers and internet lowlifes. I’m gonna make a few changes around here and try to clean the joint up. All those losers have been scaring our regulars away from the bar and sad to say, but the dofollow might have to be a lot harder to get. That’s right, youse gonna hafta earn yore links, suckas! Ill be posting our new comment rules real darn soon.
Slowly begins to clap, rises and gives a staccato one-woman standing ovation.
Best. Line. EVER!
“Just like before, I lit incense and made a magic circle on the floor, then chanted arcane words in a long dead forgotten language.”
Side note: My anti-spam word is “complimentary” so I’m gonna assume I’m one of the chosen few who will receive a free pass, a complimentary comment, if you will.
That sucks about all the hacking. If they did snag some beer without you knowing, I hope it was skunk beer.
.-= cardiogirl´s last blog ..The book of questions, Volume 67 =-.
Okay, I’m going to admit it. I was jacked when I saw my previous comment show up on the screen after hitting submit. I actually thought, “Score!”
And then I noticed “Your comment is awaiting moderation.”
No score for me. And now my anti-spam word is paininthebutt which, while extremely amusing, cuts deep.
.-= cardiogirl´s last blog ..The book of questions, Volume 67 =-.
Cardiogirl: As you noticed, I changed all the anti spam words. Any time you need a magic circle upgrade, give me a call
Hey Tim,
Glad you knew what to do. I’m not sure I would have known, and I don’t really want to spend my time learning…
What version of WordPress were you using, and do you know how they broke in?
Anyway, I understand “temporary blogger burnout”…
Good to have you back, and Ernie’s been doing a fine job of serving up the Blue Beaver while you’ve been gone. ~ Steve, the trade show displays guru
.-= trade show displays guru´s last blog ..Are Trade Shows Obsolete? =-.
Steve:
We are now using WordPress 2.8.6. I’m not sure exactly which version we were running previously because I never wrote the numbers down, but it dated way back to the beginning of this year. In other words, it was a dinosaur! Can you believe that? But now, we are “so 3008, you’re so 2008″ to quote Black Eyed Peas.
I’m not 100% sure of the exact means of entry, but I have suspicions. It is all things I should have taken care of months ago. Owning a mac gives me a false sense of security about stuff like this. Sure, my laptop is safe, but that doesn’t extend to my blog…
I like your new changes, getting hacked is a terrible thing to have happen to you. It’s a good thing that the only thing that happened was that banner ads were slapped on to your site. Like you said much worse could have happened!
Once our entire website was stolen from India!
…Also, make sure that you file for copyright protection and send to your host provider. This will save a lot of time and hassle proving that the site was originally yours. At least in the case of if your site was stolen from you…
Oh man, I hate hackers… I’m so worried I’m gonna get the hack too. how to you prevent a hack? what steps would you take?
One of my greatest nightmares is to get hacked, so I would also like to hear how to prevent that. I write for a bunch of different blogs, and I so far haven’t had any issues with that. Cross my fingers…
I’m afraid of hackers. I always try to come up with a really sophisticated password so they don’t get in, then end up forgetting it and having to go back to something simple. How do they always get in? I need to know how to prevent it but I guess you’re not the best person to ask huh