Maybe I deserve it. I haven't posted here in an unacceptably long time, and someone was bound to notice. Many of you are faithful readers, coming back again and again, desperately hoping for some small nugget of wisdom from me. And here I am, high and mighty, thinking that I can withhold these gems without repercussion.
Really, it kind of serves me right. I ignore this place and someone goes off and hacks into it.
I really should't be surprised. As a technology professional, I know that laziness breeds danger. If I am not actively involved in the systems I manage, I risk the wrath of the hack, or the crack, or the general failure of the system. Multiple backups, persistent udpates, and a thorough knowledge of current exploits are all required to keep a system up and running. And when you let this stuff go, when you run off to some fairly land where there are rivers of chocolate and trees of ju-ju bees, you can say goodbye to your beloved stability.
So some juvenile hacking group sent out bots looking for the version of the content management system that I use to run this site. They found me, they copied and pasted a published exploit, and, voila, they deleted all of the stories and replaced the content with some cracker propaganda. Neither creative nor difficult, these 14 year olds thought that they were somehow worth more because of this. And we all know the truth therein.
Fortunately, I am not defeated that easily. Despite my utter lack of preparation for something like this, my host, midPhase, had several backups that I could request. We had the basic site back up and running overnight. The next day, the crackers returned, desperate to re-prove their manhood. This time, though, I had already backed up the site myself, and was able to get it up and running quickly.
So I updated the CMS, applied some third-party security solutions, fixed a few things that have been bothering me, and now the site is back, better than ever. There are still a few small modifications I need to make, but I feel pretty comfortable with how well all of the upgrades went. The most important upgrade, though, is in my attitude toward this site. Instead of letting it flounder, almost decompose, I realize that I must engage you, my dear reader, by returning to the form I displayed only a short while ago. By posting regularly, and by backing up the system myself regularly, I can ensure that I can recover quickly once another exploit is found, and, well, exploited.
Fun times....fun times...
