[Categories: Site Announcements]
ZOMG! Hax0rs! No really, backup your blogs, boys and girls
*Actually I don’t think I was hacked after all, but a broken database still makes Bad Things happen*
Yep, something very weird happened. After getting the new theme installed (I love the Freshy look but will contiue to mod it so this blog looks different from all the others), it looks like I was hacked or something. So…
If you know why the wp_options table had to be repaired, or why the pages became posts in the database, or why an install appeared to have happened when I wasn’t even online at the time, please let me know. It all points to a Wordpress-targeting hacker bot of some sort (bearing in mind that human hackers like to leave witty messages and so on, I *think* it was a bot) - either that or it was a serious glitch on my server. I shall investigate further.
Since so many of us are using Wordpress right now, I ought to warn you that there could be a hacker who has decided to target people in the anime blogosphere. Seriously guys, the ‘hacking is what happens to other people’ mindset I had is naive and you’ll kick yourself if you haven’t made a backup.
Posted on August 19th, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
Hey Martin, sounds rather annoying! While I run and back-up my own blog, how do you know that you were hacked? If a few things randomly broke, it sounds like the MySQL DB just crashed; sometimes that happens for no reason (speaking from experience and you’re hosted by the same company as me). On the other hand, hackers will often make it clear that you’ve been exploited by posting their tag or whatever.
Posted on August 19th, 2007 @ 5:40 pm
@Bateszi:
I guess I was being a bit over-cautious with the suggestion of hacking, but since so many of us use the same type of software there could be a widespread problem even if the possibility is quite slim.
As for the underlying reason, I’m starting to lean towards a random DB crash, since there didn’t seem to be a ‘hacker was here’ message and the wp_options table needed to be repaired (an operation that was mercifully simple and seemed to have no lasting ill-effects). It could have tricked Wordpress into resetting or something, which might explain why my pages suddenly became posts in the table. Whatever happened, my lesson here is that backing up files and DB is A Good Idea, regardless of cause.
Posted on August 19th, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
What version of Wordpress are you using? If you’re on 2.1.x, you might want to update.
Posted on August 19th, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
@Karura: Since I wasn’t 100% sure the files were okay I did a full upgrade with the latest version…tbh I can’t remember the last time I upgraded it so it could have been an older version with some security holes. There’s no harm done by the looks of things but it didn’t half make me panic!
Posted on August 19th, 2007 @ 8:22 pm
Pity about the hackers! Anywho, what is your new banner from?
Posted on August 19th, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
@Citizengeek: The banner image is the plane from Shinkai’s The Place Promised in our Early Days. I know all of my banner images come from his movies (apart from that of the Reviews Archive, which was an image from Lain put through numerous filters and effects by Macromedia Fireworks) but they look so damned awesome!