Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Originally posted by Brenda Coulter at No rules. Just write.

Sometimes the internet is just not a very nice place. Last week, for instance, an individual who's been stealing my blog posts for months and presenting them (without attribution) as if they were written for his site came over here and left a comment in an attempt to pass off his theft as a compliment to my "art." And now, my website has been hacked.

Don't worry, I fixed it. (If tech stuff scares you, close your eyes for this part.) Somebody had dropped an iframe tag into my code that pointed to a nice little (this is sarcasm, folks) Trojan horse program. I have reason to believe it was not my admin password that was compromised, but the security of my web host's server--which means I can't prevent this from happening again. Yes, I plan to change hosts, but at the moment I don't even want to think about uploading and testing my 30-page website.

Frustrating? You bet. Especially when I'm still struggling with a terrible bout of bronchitis that isn't responding to treatment.

Outside my office window, the sky has grown dark and rain is hammering the patio. Thunder is crashing and my lights are flickering. After losing my internet connection three times, I have switched over to dial-up just long enough to publish this post.

And then I am going back to bed.

A byline been added to this post to foil a site which has been stealing my daily writings and passing them off as its own.

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7 comments:

Susan Rix said...

Oh! I can't believe your website has now been hacked on top of everything else. Incredible! I admit that Tech stuff does scare me, but it's my ignorance of the tech stuff that frightens me more!

I'm so sorry to hear that you're unwell and the bronchitis isn't responding to treatment. I'm keeping you in my prayers.

Take things easy and I hope you get well soon.

Mirtika said...

Is that why Blogger has been freaky for two weeks? Hackers?

Well, I hope they don't hack my site. (I'm not important enough to hack, but still).

I wouldn't know how to fix it.

Can I call you if they do? :)

Get better. Bronchitis sucks.

Mir

Neal said...

Hi Brenda

So sorry to hear about all your troubles. Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us about the website hack, despite your illness. I had no idea that websites could be hacked this way (and I pretend to know a little about this sort of thing!), so it was valuable information to me and others I suspect. Please get better soon, and improve the weather while you're about it. We miss your smiling face.

Mir, Brenda's problems have nothing to do with Blogger. It was Brenda's personal site that was hacked, not this blog -- completely different hosts. The Blogger slowness has just been to do with some server problems they had, which have apparently now been sorted.

Bonnie S. Calhoun said...

Brenda get well and I'll pray for you to have strength through this ordeal!

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks, friends, for the sympathy and prayers. You people are just so doggone nice....

Neal, there appears to be a vulnerability in iPowerWeb's servers.They don't seem to know what it is, which is why they've been unable to stop it. It's my understanding that the hackers aren't guessing passwords and hitting one site at a time, but accessing batches of index pages at a time and inserting the malicious code into all of them (via an iframe tag dropped in just before the HTML tag).

Stinky, huh?

Anonymous said...

I hope you feel better and stronger soon. I also hope the hacker and the thief leave you alone.

Brenda Coulter said...

Thank you, Audra. The guy has finally stopped stealing my blog entries, so I'm happy about that.