I Apologize to the readers for today’s headaches when trying to view the blog. Sometime after Word’s Miss California post some plugins started acting up. We’re not sure which one yet but we’ve narrowed it down to the ones that pulled the recent comments, counted the pageviews and gave the top 10 lists, which you now see are gone from the sidebar….for now.
These plugins never gave me problems before so it’s very suspicious. I’m not ready to say it was a hack at this point (granted, Word’s post seemed to piss off a few lefties who are now gleeful that the site was down) but my server guru is going through the log and tracking down the problem. Until then those items will not appear in the sidebar.
UPDATE
Today my server guy discovered that we were indeed hacked. I will explain more after a day or so to ensure we have a handle on the attack. Meanwhile the recent comments and a lot of the toys are gone from the sidebar. For recent comments please check out the Active Discussions page. I will re-enable those plugins after we’re certain they won’t cause problems.
UPDATE II
Whoakay, the scoop. Apparently during the last hack of the site almost a year ago a bot was placed on our server which allowed someone to hack into the site whenever they wanted. The domains used in the script originated from Russia so I have no idea what that is about but all that has been secured. Thankfully my web designer and server guru, Mike from Aria Interactive has been a godsend. He is quite the detective and has help root out all these hack attempts. You ever need a hosting service check these guys out.
Hopefully the comment stuff on the sidebar will be back up soon. The post count stuff has already gone back up. Thanks for your patience.
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Thanks Curt, for all your work in keeping FA safe, and to Aria Interative. LOL, I appreciate all the updates!
I don’t suppose you got the IP address on the Hacker.
I saw the little flipped off image they left in your site directory- under most recently modified. 🙂
@marbleblaster: You mean the Johnny Cash image? That one is for those who have been banned from the site. That’s the page they get routed to.
@ditto: It looks like it wasn’t a hack to get even with the site more like a way to send spam….still not sure yet the reason for it.