About a week ago, Salman called me. “Bhaijan,” he said, “your blog has been hacked.”
I blinked and frowned at the same time. “Really? It was fine yesterday.”
“Check it out,” he instructed me. 30 seconds later, I was watching the following scroll on my blog’s home page:
I couldn’t figure out if I should laugh or cry. That someone had hacked my blog was such a bizarre fact that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “Is my blog really this important?” I humoured myself, considering that this ulta seedha corner receives what can be called peanuts in terms of visitor traffic. Then I tried to recall if I had inadvertently offended any Palestinians in the recent past; I couldn’t remember. (In fact, now that my blog is back up and running, I did a Google search to find out if I had ever mentioned Palestine on my blog. I found only one hit — that too in the comments, and which is too innocent to be considered an incentive.)
Anyway, first thing to do was to find out if I could access the backend of my blog. Quite expectedly, I couldn’t. I then tried to log into the administration area provided by my web host, and succeeded. Next step was to deny every request to my blog so that innocent googlers would not be shocked. Finally, (since I had to get it out of my system) I ranted about it on Twitter:
Restoring the blog back to its original state took a whole afternoon. For those interested, it involved nuking everything on my web host, reinstalling WordPress, restoring the database, reinstalling my theme, reinstalling/reconfiguring all plugins, and hardening the whole setup. Here are a couple of lessons learned:
- WP-DB-Backup is a self-hosted WordPress blogger’s best friend (and so is good old fashioned file backup).
- Keeping WordPress updated to its latest version is absolutely essential. I have a hunch that my blog got hacked because I was too lazy to update to the latest version. It looked minor, but it was a security update; I should have applied it.
As for the reason why this blog became a target for a hack, I have no idea. My guess? Some script kiddies thought that that would be funzors.
15 comments
Salman
Jun 6, 2011 at 10:03 am
Shukar hai you were not asked to resolve the Palestine issue to restore your blog
karachiite
Jun 10, 2011 at 3:05 am
All i wanna say is cum back with a juicy post pleaseee!! n thanks for getting blog back in safe hands
No One
Jun 15, 2011 at 11:54 pm
Heyy Salaams…how are you doing? just wanted to wish you well, stay posted!
AWK
Jun 18, 2011 at 3:19 am
good. ‘cuz i sauntered back here one fine days some days ago and it prompted me for a password…and I got thinking…oh oh Bhabi banned him from blogging !:P
chalo must have been a relief.
Saadat
Jun 20, 2011 at 3:13 pm
Salman,
Did I miss an opportunity to seize the Nobel Peace Prize? Damn!
karachiite,
A juicy post? One of these days.
No One,
Hey, I’m good. Hope you are too.
AWK,
Haha! “Bhabi” doesn’t need to impose a ban; I, myself, am pretty good at it.
H.S
Jul 5, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Man … i thought this blog was dead … perhaps the author got married or simply forgot all about it ….. i am happy to see him visiting monthly atleast
….
Hina
Jul 31, 2011 at 7:17 pm
I wanted to congratulate you on the hack!
Haha! May be the hackers just need you to update your blog or may be they new that they would get some publicity (which they did) if they hacked your blog.
By the way, thanks for the recommendation. I’m going to get the backup plug-in right away!
knicq
Aug 5, 2011 at 5:16 pm
What? No Ramadan update? I WILL have my yearly ramadan blog, thank you.
Ramadan mubarak to you and Mrs. Ulta Seedha; may all your sins be forgiven, and all your goods be rewarded manifold. Ameen.
Saadat
Aug 9, 2011 at 8:36 am
H.S,
Actually, I did get married!
Hina,
I hope you like the plugin; it’s very nifty.
Oh, so it was all a hackers’ publicity stunt? And here I was thinking that my blog was important.
Bhaijan,
So sorry, but as much as I’d like, Ramadan updates don’t come to me anymore. *sigh* Ramadan mubarak to you and yours too.
Asma
Aug 30, 2011 at 8:39 pm
At least someone gave you privilege of being hacked
Eid Mubarak !
BaptizedLucifer
Aug 31, 2011 at 3:10 am
ulti seedhi blog pay ultay seedhay kaam hi to hon gay na
silly hackers.
Specs
Oct 24, 2011 at 5:14 pm
Try and update more often – perhaps the hacker was a reader who tried to post in your place – since aap kay tou koi iraday nai nazar aa rahay thay naee post kay
maliha
Oct 25, 2011 at 2:03 am
in reply of miss specs=
ap ka apnai baray mai kiya khayal hai about a post?
Saadat
Oct 25, 2011 at 9:49 am
Asma,
A completely unwanted privilege.
BaptizedLucifer,
Haha! Durust farmaya!
Specs,
What Maliha said.
Maliha,
I second you!
Zeeshan
May 27, 2012 at 2:16 am
may be script kiddies want to get promted on ulta seedha :-p