Swine Killed My Blog
Swine Hacker
Hooking Up Smart was down for nearly two days this weekend. I’m sorry if you tried to visit and found nobody home. Since the site was hacked over Labor Day weekend, it’s been limping along with some outages here and there. But Friday night all of the insidious code and worms that the hacker had planted in my files struck hard.
I spent many hours trying to sort it out, but in the end, HUS gave a sputtering gasp and expired. I had no idea what to do with the corpse – I’ve never had a dead blog on my hands before. After many, many conversations with the wonderful tech support saviors at Blue Host, it was “nuked,” and the rebuilding process began. This evening, Hooking Up Smart is back, at about 90% of its former self. It will take me a little time to recapture everything, so please be patient. I do hope to publish new content on the same schedule as always, so look for a new post in the next 24 hours.
Who does this? Who destroys blogs as a hobby? Someone is actually delighted with themselves right now, and probably had an awesome weekend. I’m naming him (or her) the Swine 09 H1N1 Blog Killer. If I were that good at hacking into private files, I would put my talents to use at some of the Swiss banks (a la Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, awesome read)!
I know you’ll be surprised when I tell you that I learned something about relationships in this experience. This weekend I spoke with about 12 different guys at Blue Host, trying to recover my baby. Every single one was soft spoken, smart, sweet and patient. So I’m gonna have to say one more time that geeks are the way to go. I’ve just gotta figure out where one meets them, because I just don’t think most of you are willing to spend the weekend at a Star Trek convention.
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Oh no! Thankfully you were able to at least recover your material! I don't know how people could enjoy doing such a thing, but it's good you were able to get help with it. Glad you're back!
Thank you, I am sooooo relieved my content wasn't lost forever. 191 posts! Yikes, I never could have recreated all that.
I was wondering what happened. And yes, anytime I can recreate such (well my) content. But you knew that, right? Or strongly suspected it… Good to see that everything's looking a bit better & in recovery. Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'
Thanks, VJ, I appreciate the good wishes.
VJ, are you saying you have a photographic memory?
No, I've got a big FAQ file in there. You just happened upon a few of my favs. And it's like Jazz, you can always riff on the same theme too. Hope things are back & running at full speed soon. Cheers, 'VJ'
I am so sorry! That is horrific! I didn't even know people could or do that! I am glad things are looking up though. Apparently, to meet nerdy guys all you need to do is call tech support.
Haha, yeah I guess so! Seriously, some of these guys were beyond adorable. It makes me realize how people can fall for each other online without ever having seen each other – like in You've Got Mail, one of my most favorite movies ever!
I've fallen for people twice that I've never met. It's awkward – and kind of
delicious at the same time.
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How did you find out you got hacked? o_o
My site went down initially, and I found some strange inserted code. We thought we got it all deleted, but “iframes” (whatever those are) started showing up all over the place. There was obviously a script in place to keep corrupting the code, and there was just no way to stay on top of it. When it went down Friday night, the tech support people were looking at my files saying things like, “This is bad. This is really bad.” I didn't have a good WordPress backup, but fortunately I did have my database backed up. Lesson learned.
How did you find out you got hacked? o_o
My site went down initially, and I found some strange inserted code. We thought we got it all deleted, but “iframes” (whatever those are) started showing up all over the place. There was obviously a script in place to keep corrupting the code, and there was just no way to stay on top of it. When it went down Friday night, the tech support people were looking at my files saying things like, “This is bad. This is really bad.” I didn't have a good WordPress backup, but fortunately I did have my database backed up. Lesson learned.