4800 Aussie web sites evaporate after hack

yeah I've read a while ago that some dude got hacked and lost 3 years worth of hard work and income. Pretty scary.

This is freaking... 4800 is a huge number. I feel sorry about all the victims... it takes years of effort, time & money to become recognized on the internet. Thanks for sharing this information.

This is a sad post. So sorry for all the victims. I hope someone will make a move to stop hacking.

Yea my mate lost his whole business and has to start again its going to be hard , he has some backups but not enough to put the whoe site up again.

People won't listen when told to backup backup backup. Sometimes it takes something like this for them to realize. You can't help those that won't help themselves. If you have your whole business dependent on one or several websites then you would be silly not to have backups of these websites in an alternative place.

If you were running an accounting firm or a doctors surgery would you only store the records in one place? You'd be silly if you did.

I would be hitting Google cached pages and the way back machine website and recover as many of my lost pages as possible before they all go offline.

I backup once a week onto a disk but my host Bluehost backup every 24 hours anyway. But what if they had an issues because of hackers too?

I wish it were possible to stop hacking; however, given the fact that software is not perfect (i.e. will always have vulnerabilities) and many people have no objections to criminal activity, it is a risk that will not go away.

All you can do is mitigate and manage the risk.

Security is a pain; there's no doubting that. But if you rely on a website for your income, then you have to do it. Backups (and not just the web server; what happens if something should happen to YOU and your family relies on the income?). Password management. Cash security (we've all heard the horror stories...). Contingency plans (could you move your sites to another hosting company RIGHT NOW?). Etc.

And almost all hosting companies offer backups, although in some cases, there is an additional fee for this.

Two more backup tips:

1. Have a backup of your backup and work from the backup copy if you need to restore. If possible, store one of the copies "somewhere else", i.e. other than your home office.

2. Test your backups. Grab an unused domain and restore your site on that domain. Does everything work? For that matter, do you have a "blank" backup (it happens...)?

HTH,
Tom

How many times are we going to hear these sad tales
before people wake up and extract their heads from
their nether regions... and start acting like real business
owners?

This story is spectacular because it wiped out 4800 sites
in one place but I guarantee you this happens at least 4800
times every day around the world.

I'm sorry for whoever might be affected due to the negligence
of these site owners but for them I have little sympathy.

BACK UP YOUR STUFF... RIGHT NOW... STOP READING
THE WARRIOR FORUM AND GO DO IT... IMMEDIATELY!

Tsnyder

If you use Wordpress use backup buddy. You can schedule database backups or the complete wordpress install including pics and even folders not used by the wordpress install. Remember a database backup won't backup you pics.

With backup buddy I can restore a site completely in a few minutes.

Good suggestion, IM Dude... There are automated solutions available for just about any site configuration. In most cases, they are inexpensive, reliable, and do the job quite nicely.

One thing I'd like to add: You, as the business owner, are solely responsible for your business' security. This is a fundamental principle of computer security. You can delegate the execution of it (i.e. pay a sysad to do the backups and maintenance), but when (not "if") things go bad, you are responsible. All of your planning needs to be done under this assumption.

So please: If you have something (i.e a script) or somebody doing the work for you, CHECK IT to make sure that it's getting done. The word "assume" has no place in business continuity planning (and probably the worst assumption is that your hosting company has a backup of your site. NEVER make this assumption unless you can get your hands on the backup and verify it -- in which case, it's no longer an assumption...).

As an example, I use wp-db-backup on all of my WordPress blogs. It emails me a backup copy of the database every day (I send it to my Gmail account and have a filter that automatically sends it to the Trash, where it's held for 30 days, then deleted -- that way, I always have 30 days worth of backups. I also keep back ups of my installation files, themes, and plug-ins, plus a list of custom config steps in a procedure; that way, I don't have to back them up). Every once in a while, I pull a backup, open it up, and ensure that the file actually has data in it... I also take a backup every once in a while and actually restore it to a test blog to ensure that it's good.

How often should you do this? Again, this is up to you, Responsible Business Owner. How much risk can you tolerate? If you lose sleep at night because you are worried about your web site crashing, then daily -- if not hourly -- backups (thoroughly tested) might be right for you. If you have a blog that makes you $1 a day, then once a month (or once a year) might suffice. YOU have to decide what's right for you and how much risk you can tolerate.

Yes, you can take legal action / withhold payment / whatever if you outsource security and things go wrong, but in the interim, your money-making business isn't making any money (also keep in mind that such action takes time away from what you should be doing, i.e. making money and serving customers). When you create your contingency / emergency recovery plan, your number one goal should be to get your business making money again just as quickly as possible.

HTH,
Tom

Backups would have stopped this, but the fault still obviously lies with the hackers, and not the webmasters. It sucks that they had to be the victims of something like that.

I can see where it's "the hacker's fault", even without knowing exactly what happened (and the company has not yet posted a synopsis of what happened, so we don't know). I'll take it a step further; it's criminal activity, plain and simple.

But it's still a risk that you, the business owner, are ultimately responsible for mitigating. So from that perspective (and from the perspective of "best practices" in my industry), it's the business owner's fault. S/he should have expected that a hacker would come (in fact, if they weren't aware of this risk, then "double shame" on them because the evidence is -- or was -- in their log files).

As a side note, you can mitigate every possible risk and still experience a security incident. You can never totally eliminate risk; there will always be some residual risk that you must accept as a cost of doing business. If nothing else, there is always the risk that some new vulnerability will be discovered and exploited in the software you use on your web server.

I'll bet anybody a dollar, though, that when all is said and done, the real reason for this intrusion was either:

1. An unpatched vulnerability in either the underlying operating system, a service running on the server (i.e. Apache or PHP), or a script that somebody was running. I see attempts to exploit a vulnerability in PHPMyAdmin in my logs almost daily (the current "hack of the week", I guess) and all kinds of other "interesting" stuff. They are banging at your door every day, so you need to do everything you can to ensure that they don't enter.

2. A weak password. Far too many people re-use passwords, and recent data breaches have resulted in stolen passwords -- which the hackers immediately try out at 1,001 other places (usually with success). And this is on top of people who use easy to guess password -- or no password at all.

Patch your systems. Don't reuse passwords. Use strong passwords. Change them frequently... I saw something the other day that said, "Passwords are like socks; they need to be changed frequently."

Hacking is a threat that your business faces. Deal with it. Be ready for it. Playing "The Blame Game" won't restore your site -- and your business.

Best regards,
Tom