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I was Hacked!

by Pauline Bennett
34 replies
I had a terrible day yesterday, I was working on my main blog and replying to some comments that had come in from my last post when I noticed something very wrong.
If I tried to go to my blog in a browser I got this message coming up that my site was unsafe and had been infected with malware, then I was getting so many emails from my autoresponder saying that there was a problems with my feeds and not just from one domain but all of them.
I was getting worried by then so my husband started looking at my Hostgator account and we knew that we had been hit and it was affecting all of my domains and sub domains.....
I just would like to say that after we contacted the live chat on Hostgator who were very helpful that it was all sorted out, it was a crawler that had got in and spread throughout my account.
I would recommend Hostgator to anyone, they were very quick to resolve my problem and I'm pleased to say all my sites are back up and running this morning.
I hope no one esle has to have a day like I had yesterday!
#hacked
  • Profile picture of the author Pongo
    I'm glad they helped you out, I use them and remember reading "security is up to you" hackers can get into any site they want, there really is no way to stop them, so back up often.
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    • Profile picture of the author Francois du_Toit
      One of my sites got hacked last year... It sucks! But, Hostgator also came to my rescue and sorted it all out in no time at all.
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      • Profile picture of the author Joni D
        My google analytics was hijacked! I noticed in my analytics that a site was sending a bunch of traffic with 0 seconds and messing my analytics up but found in a google forum to google "find an ip address" and put the site url in the search box and take the IP back to google analytics and create a filter and block the IP, it stopped
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      • Profile picture of the author Pauline Bennett
        Francois
        yes they are very good and I would recommend them to anyone.
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  • Profile picture of the author SamuelUherek
    I had the same problem three months ago. I tried to solve it on my own, but I wasn't abel to. So I contacted Hostgator and they fixed it in an hours. I have had good experience with Hostgator as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author Entrecon
    So, after reading this thread and thinking about it, I started searching to see if there was an automatic back-up for websites like they advertise for PCs. I came across SiteVault. Looks decent and the $99 price tag for unlimited sites isn't bad. However, I would like to do some comparisons. Does anyone know if their are any competitors?
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  • Profile picture of the author ErikNilsson
    Backup Backup Backup coz these Hackers are coming with different tactics.
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    • Profile picture of the author womenswaytowealth
      Couldn't agree more - unfortunately many of us (I include myself!) using WordPress are not as tech savvy as users of other platforms and aren't aware of the potential dangers of hacking, or how to protect our sites. I've just blogged and posted some useful videos on protecting WP sites and backing-up content on my womenswaytowealth site.
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      • Profile picture of the author VipsK
        That sounds awful, I also have several wordpress sites and I am using a service called ManageWP - you can start by using it for free, but they have a back up facility too, which is very handy...
        Glad it worked out with hostgator too though - it is pretty scary what people do to try and wreck things for others - cant really understand that mentality myself!

        All the best
        Vips
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    • Profile picture of the author Brian John
      Originally Posted by ErikNilsson View Post

      Backup Backup Backup coz these Hackers are coming with different tactics.
      this^^^

      Glad to hear everything was resolved for u, Pauline, but there's a good lesson here...backup!

      I fairly regularly backup my entire site, download and store it to an external disk. I do this a least a few times a month, as well as anytime I make any significant changes. This way if ANYTHING happens I can always have my site uploaded to its state prior to the attack. Btw, I also do this immediately before I have any hired programmers do work.

      And regarding hostgator, no complaints, they've been great to me.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    Pauline are your blogs Wordpress based?
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  • Profile picture of the author womenswaytowealth
    I've just been hacked too - and it took my hosting company, and a freelance tech guy to sort it all out. I took my frustrations out by blogging about it, which prompted a friend of mine to put two videos together to a) help auto back-up WordPress content and b) protect your site from future hacking.

    I'm not able to post links but you can check out the videos at the womenswaytowealth blog

    Let's protect our sites and keep our content safe!
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  • Profile picture of the author Anthony
    My sites were hacked last year too. I installed a plugin that allow people to submit article to my sites. All my sites that installed these plugins got hacked. I have to wipe out all the files and re-install wordpress on all these domains. Painful...but that was also the last time I participate in such activities.
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  • Profile picture of the author cooler1
    Good to hear its fixed. Did you find out how the crawler managed to get in? Just wondering what steps you take to prevent it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Giggle
    i was ALSO HACKED YESTERDAY and hostgator is still trying to resolve the problem. at least 20 wordpress blogs were affected but no html websites. ezinearticles has started to take my articles offline. a horrible experience
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  • Profile picture of the author mediadeveloped
    Glad everything worked out for you- I've always had a good experience with Hostgator.
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  • Profile picture of the author Ord Allenbea
    For those that have problems with hacker attempts you could read this post I posted here - http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5548845
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  • Profile picture of the author nRehman
    Hi Pauline, its great you got your sites back.
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  • Profile picture of the author warriorwoman2011
    I can honestly feel the way you are feeling.

    I can give you one advice, always backup your blogs and use proper .htaccess methods

    I was hacked once as well, one of my wp blogs and hostgator had come off very gently.

    Do at least 3-day periodical backups...it's quite laborious but trust me, you'll have less frustration in the end
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  • Profile picture of the author MsMoneyspider
    I had a site hacked - I lost the lot. My hosting was with Brainhost and communication was like snail-mail. Every email took 2 days and was answered by someone different - who had no idea of what was happening. The process was so slow that all clean back-ups had been overwritten.

    I'm now with Hostgator and very satisfied.
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  • Profile picture of the author tim_buchalka
    I suggest you do the following.

    1. Change all your passwords (cpanel, ftp, email, etc).

    2. For your wordpress blogs, ensure you have the latest version of wordpress itself and all plugins.

    3. Create a new user on the blog and make that the admin user. Then make the "admin" user account (the original one) a non-admin - This is because many wordpress hacks involve accessing via the standard admin user and this way even if they happen to get into the admin account they wont be able to do any harm.

    4. When posting on the blog, do NOT post from your new admin account, rather create a brand new user on the blog (with the "author" role). That way hackers should have no possible way to know what your real admin username is.

    5. Backup often.

    These things should keep your site and valuable content safe.

    Cheers
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    • Profile picture of the author Pauline Bennett
      Originally Posted by tim_buchalka View Post

      I suggest you do the following.

      1. Change all your passwords (cpanel, ftp, email, etc).

      2. For your wordpress blogs, ensure you have the latest version of wordpress itself and all plugins.

      3. Create a new user on the blog and make that the admin user. Then make the "admin" user account (the original one) a non-admin - This is because many wordpress hacks involve accessing via the standard admin user and this way even if they happen to get into the admin account they wont be able to do any harm.

      4. When posting on the blog, do NOT post from your new admin account, rather create a brand new user on the blog (with the "author" role). That way hackers should have no possible way to know what your real admin username is.

      5. Backup often.

      These things should keep your site and valuable content safe.

      Cheers
      Thanks Tim great advice!
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  • Profile picture of the author BingeSite
    wordpress is so popular that I get attacks on all my sites targetted specifically for wordpress although none of my sites are wordpress. They usually look for wp-admin.php to identify whether you are running the wordpress software.

    There are plugins that help you improve security of wordpress by doing some simple steps. However web host is not always at fault, it's also software.

    I use several different dedicated server providers now, we get attacks routinely. see my sig link for another thread where I have screenshot. Its far too common.


    I highly recommend adding cloudflare, it lowers the risk greatly, improves your sites availability (serves pages even if your site was down). Does not require coding and is effing FREE
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