Some of you may have noticed on this site a black-and-red screen with a self-congratulatory message from a bunch of assholes who are not me. Naturally this occurred when I was out in the middle of Nevada, so it took a while before I was able to effect repairs. Things are (mostly) working now. Actually, I had them fixed even before the hosting company became aware of the problem, apparently. The time they cite for the intrusion was 10pm July 3rd, but it was 10am or even earlier that the attack occurred. That fills me with confidence. (Maybe it’s just a typo in their message.)
My hosting company is setting up a new server and will be restoring this site from backups that are a few days old. Hopefully I’ll be able to update the database (no affected) to include episodes (like this one) and comments that have happened since the hack.
I assumed at first that the brand-new version of WordPress might have a security exploit, but then I discovered that jerssoftwarehut.com and all the sub-sites I have on that server (except paseeger.com, for reasons I can’t figure), were hacked. Then I tried to get into the control panel and it was hacked. That takes more access than even I have; the control panel code is off in some other place. No, my Web host was hacked.
I do not yet know whether the credit card fraud protection kicked in at about that time as a result of actual fraud or because I was traveling and some robot flagged the behavior as suspicious. It looks like there might be some bogus charges, but I won’t know for sure until I can talk to an actual human tomorrow. (I did talk to a human in India, but she was unable to access the information I need.
So now I have no credit card, and the ATM powers of the same card seem to be suspended as well (that or I’m misremembering my PIN). All the cash My sweetie thrust upon me for the trip, more than I would have taken otherwise, has proven a lifesaver.
Once I had a glowing recommendation for MM Hosting on this site. I really liked them at first; their service and responsiveness was fantastic. Things have been going downhill with them for a while, and I had already been investigating other options that gave me more control. Inertia has kept me here for the most part. No longer. Goodbye, MMHosting. I’ll be asking for a refund for the remainder of my contract.
I’ve found that it’s a bummer trying to live without plastic. Cash is definitely no longer king. More and more, I run into situations where cash is not even accepted — never mind the verbiage about “legal tender for all debts public and private.”
I hope you get things straightened out soon. Meanwhile, if you have a checkbook, there’s “First National Bank of Wal-Mart” — if you make a purchase, you can write a check higher than the amount of the purchase and get cash that way. (If you don’t make a purchase, there’s a fee to cash the check.)
to turn a phrase, “is there an unswet button?”
CA is right. Got cash on a SouthWest flight? forget buying booze. Of course the internet never took cash.
It seem that Google had experienced some kind of hack issue as well over the holiday weekend as my main Google account was temporarily suspended due to suspicious activity. Not sure if it was related; you just never know these days. Hope things get cleared up real soon for you.
Carrie
A couple of years ago, a bunch of computers got hacked, including UNM’s and some at LANL, and your description, “a black-and-red screen with a self-congratulatory message from a bunch of assholes,” pretty much describes what they got. The attack was very sophisticated, and it was eventually traced to China, although the Chinese government denied knowing anything about it. It took UNM weeks to recover, and it prevented me from enrolling in a program that would have put me on a fast track to a teaching certificate, should I ever desire to teach in public schools in New Mexico. (It’s OK to teach without a license at the college level, but for K-12, it’s another story.)
Given that Google and China are engaged in a dispute over access vs. censorship, it stands to reason that the Chinese hackers might attack Google — and while they were at it, why not also attack a few other U.S. web hosting services?