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Have Your Websites Ever Been Hacked?

by stoltingmediagroup
4 replies
Last week I noticed that a few of my sites on Hostgator were down, and were replaced with a "hacked by" notice. Hostgator blamed it on our computers possibly being infected, and on possibly running outdated scripts etc. This week another site was down again. Hostgator again blamed it on this end, without apologizing for the fact that 2 different hackers managed to take down several of our income producing sites in less than a week. Am I to believe that even if our computers are infected (which to the best of my knowledge they are not) and even if we were running outdated scripts (which to the best of my knowledge we are not), should I be concerned that this is now going to be as common as receiving spam? Any similar stories? advice? suggestions?

Arnold Stolting
#hacked #recently #websites
  • Profile picture of the author LillySage
    If you're worried about it, switch to another host. I've been hacked before and the only way to be sure is to purge everything and switch hosts.
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    • Profile picture of the author stoltingmediagroup
      Originally Posted by LillySage View Post

      If you're worried about it, switch to another host. I've been hacked before and the only way to be sure is to purge everything and switch hosts.
      Switching hosts may be a solution however not an easy decision to make as I've been with Hostgator for over 7 years. Their customer service has always been helpful, and their servers have never really let me down up until this point. Those are the main reason I've stayed for so long. However, I also can't ignore several hacked sites within a week. Thus I am in a dilemma.
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  • Profile picture of the author bkkmma
    Hmm, once you've ran a bajillion anti virus scans on your system, changed all your passwords including website passwords, email passwords, everything else - then it may be prudent to get another host setup and ready in case you need to quickly switch your DNS over, so everything will be in place for you. If you don't end up needing it, oh well, what's $50 for the piece of mind in knowing you can be back up and running the same day on a different host? Then if you run into trouble on your new host, well.. that's rough. :\
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    • Profile picture of the author SunilTanna
      There are two main types of hack that you nee to worry about if using a decent web host.

      One is that your computer can get infected with a virus that captures FTP passwords or intercepts FTP communication. Usually what then happens is these hacks insert crap, usually obfuscates JavaScript when you upload files to your site.

      This is usually an automated attack.

      To fix: clean your computer, change all your passwords, check your backups o your web content are clean ( the ones you have on your own PC, memory sticks or cd - you do have backups don't you?), erase everything from your site, and reupload the clean copy. If you are running on a shared host, and you think somebody else is infection you, you can also use the chmod function in FTP to remove writeable permissions from most of your files (most hosts will still be able to display the file, but it tends to throw off these types of viruses - however you will need to remember to restore the writeable permission before uploading a new copy of any file).

      The other is outdated scripts. This is often but not always a manual attack.

      Most common type of attack of this sort is an SQL injection or file injection attack. Basically the hacker takes advantage of a bug in a common script to insert own code not your site. They can mess with your data(like deleting everything from a mysql database, or worse altering stuff), and may even be able to execute any code they like , at which point they own your site.

      Updating scripts is not enough to fix this, because it only stops new injections, but does not clean up any nasty programs they may have left on your server!!
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