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You may be hosting a porn site and not even know it!

by ntarvin
18 replies
Some porn purveyor hijacked a hidden directory on my site and has been distributing his porn through my website to the tune of hundreds of hits a day!

And, not just my site, but a number of other innocent websites have been used as referrals as well.

Check your website directories carefully - mine was in a sub-directory name ".hot3" with a sitemap file in another directory.

I would never have known if I hadn't set up error page reporting.

I discovered the hijack a few months ago, and cleaned out the directories they had infested - and the files they had added copy to (yes, they actually made copy changes on my website files), but I am still getting referrals from other sites and search engines.

I'm emailing each one of the sites that refers people to my site, but no one seems to care - not one has even bothered to email me back... (sigh)

Oh, well - at least you all can now check and protect yourselves...
#hosting #site
  • Profile picture of the author brandonalan1
    Whoa... Totally scary. I better check my site. Thanks for the heads up!
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    WOW, I am going to have to look for that. The period in front of the name has a special meaning in UNIX/LINUX! It makes the item INVISIBLE! ls WON'T WORK! you have to use ls -a! anyway, I really wonder about an old system I want to just decommission. Lately, it has had a lot of problems. I'm going to try to get more stuff up tonight. And one thing I will try to do is look for these. BTW at least on HP/UX at least the find command works on them.

    Steve
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    • Profile picture of the author Frank Bruno
      I've had issues before using PHPBB forum scripts on some of the niche sites I have where bots would get in and start posting like crazy.

      It's not your typical spam posts either about Viagra and other pills. The bots would post full-blown porn pictures littered throughout the entire forum.

      It's quite embarrassing especially when you're running a membership. lol

      Frank Bruno
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      • Profile picture of the author Andy
        Hi Neil,

        Thanks for that tip I just checked...whew! You can't be too careful. It wasn't too long ago when my hosting account was hacked and I had all sorts of files with porn links in them.

        I think all the hacked folders were scripts with 777 permissions (read, write, execute by everybody). My host has worked around this so this permission never needs to be given.

        However it doesn't hurt to check now and then. Searching site: yourdomain.com on Google should bring up all the pages that are indexed.

        God bless,

        Andy
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      • Profile picture of the author Kim Standerline
        Originally Posted by Frank Bruno View Post

        I've had issues before using PHPBB forum scripts on some of the niche sites I have where bots would get in and start posting like crazy.

        It's not your typical spam posts either about Viagra and other pills. The bots would post full-blown porn pictures littered throughout the entire forum.

        It's quite embarrassing especially when you're running a membership. lol

        Frank Bruno
        Yeah I've had that Frank, I nearly died of shock (learnt some interesting things as well)

        I had to delete the forum in the end, we did it so we had to approve members, and the spam bot emails were horrific. I just got sick of them

        Kim
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        • Profile picture of the author Angela V. Edwards
          Oh, good grief. Hackers will try anything, won't they.

          BTW, are you Neil Tarvin, the guy with the awesome Word Document templates? I use those all the time.

          I bought them once and then lost them when my computer crashed so I bought them again. That's how great I think they are.
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          • Profile picture of the author ntarvin
            Originally Posted by Angela V. Edwards View Post

            Oh, good grief. Hackers will try anything, won't they.

            BTW, are you Neil Tarvin, the guy with the awesome Word Document templates? I use those all the time.

            I bought them once and then lost them when my computer crashed so I bought them again. That's how great I think they are.
            Hi, Angela -

            Yes, that's me - glad you like the templates! I'm going to add a few more templates, plus some explanatory videos, and an update for using them in the latest Word (including a new "ribbon"). But, Angela - please do NOT buy them again - just email me and I'll update you!

            Neil
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        • Profile picture of the author Frank Bruno
          Originally Posted by Kim Standerline View Post

          Yeah I've had that Frank, I nearly died of shock (learnt some interesting things as well)

          I had to delete the forum in the end, we did it so we had to approve members, and the spam bot emails were horrific. I just got sick of them

          Kim

          Yea I feel your pain... I ended up deleting one forum. It was actually a test that went to "forgotton land" so I had to nuke it.

          The other forums I changed permissions on the access levels and seemed to do the trick.

          Frank Bruno
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          • Profile picture of the author Ian Jackson
            Wow, & OUCH!

            I made post earlier today with included the full http://www.mydomain.com, now when I type mydomain.com into the search, there it is on the first page, complete with some lines from my post.

            I'm no techie - how on Earth do I get rid of it off google, and indeed anywhere else it may end up?

            Hope someone can help? I'll probably make this a separate post, too.

            Ian
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          • Profile picture of the author Jim M
            A while back I had this problem (although not porn) with xSitePro Version 1 - I had produces several adsense sites - the type that had loads of links at the bottom where no one ever looks - well I looked one day - and I saw all these strange links that I hadn't put there - I mean - how strange was that!

            I just re published the site and changed the passwords on my Cpanel access - that solve the problem - but I still don't know how they got there - probably never will.
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            Jim Montgomery www.thepublishing.press
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  • Profile picture of the author mmurtha
    Oh man Frank,

    That really stinks!


    Hey ntarvin,

    Good post. I found one of my html sites to have a similar problem a few months back. Thankfully it was an easy fix for me, but I'm sure it isn't for many if they have a lot of subs, or other directories/folders.


    Mary
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  • Profile picture of the author John Hillage
    You have my sympathies I've had hackers recently too - not porn but Adsense hijackers! They are scum and drive me up the wall!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Andy
    Nonsense John! I mean no nonsense John!

    How are they hijacking your Adsense? I don't even know what to look for.

    God bless,

    Andy
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  • Profile picture of the author ecoverartist
    I have a client who has simply not been interested in updating their website since 2002. It's incredibly complex with lots of products and scripts running. Not surprisingly they've been the target of hackers and even bank spoofers who sent out phishing emails.

    I would never have known had it not been for a brand protection agency (never knew there was such a thing until then) emailed me to let me know that bogus emails had been coming to their customers. I was listed as the tech contact for the domain name.

    It's amazing what lows people will stoop to when they think they can get something for nothing!
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    Sherice Jacob - Conversion Expert & Copywriter
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