Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate with Agent and Realtor®  Shane O'Gorman

I have seen several posts recently talking about Word Press sites being hacked. I suggested that it is more likely that the “hackers” exploited a known exploit rather than straight up hacking the site. In the world of l337 hackers, h4ck3r, haxor this is known as being a “script kiddie” The reason it is looked upon by hackers in such a derogatory way is that it doesnt actually involve any skill whatsoever. To the person being “hacked” it might feel like the "world's greatest hacker" was visiting your page.  What is curious enough about this “hacker” in particular is that very little computer knowledge was ever used in his work to compromise major companies. Instead he was more of a pioneer of social engineering which is in fact still today perhaps the greatest threat to security. In fact check out my next article and how it was most likely used to recently hack a very prominent world leader.

Back on topic... a script kiddie takes a known exploitation and uses an executable(.exe) file that was created just for this purpose. Basically this .exe file runs a simple script that gets into the software and does what its programmed to do. These files spread like wildfire and are often inpregnated with a virus themselves! What these kids dont understand is that the real hacker is using these “hackers” to infect themselves with a known virus. Thus the true hacker has hacked all the wannabe hackers and now can control their computers. 

Wow that sounds crazy huh? Well this is a generalization but is a real world scenario.

Well why does someone want to pick on me and my little site? Well its all about the bandwith and all about the Benjamins!

As I linked to previously its also the other B that we must understand Botnet. 

What is a botnet and what does that have to do with me? Well if you read that wiki article you can see how crazy the problem really is. There are a variety of reasons a person would want to control a botnet. Mostly they are used for monetary gain. A person can use your WP site to host links to a gambling site or whatever. Just like we use bloigging for SEO purposes these guys(men and women) are creating giant link farms or as explained in the wiki entry, they can be used to spam the crap out of everyones email box! Then there is DOS(Denial of Service) attacks. Oh yeah, this is the dirty stuff here and the root of some major internet problems. These things are also used in warfare believe it or not. Right now the Chinese government has been engaging American Government computers for some time now. No conspiracy this is fact Jack. Here is an interesting article on the subject and that was dated last year. Since then attacks have increased tremendously.

Anyways this has a lot to do with why your site is a target, especially if it is a popular blog because you have all that much more traffic to begin with.

So enter stage right: Google.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Thank you Google because someone needs to warn everyone.

It is an absolute must that your site be updated the instant an update is available. It is also crucial that you are backing up sensitive data. I suggest daily backups. If you cant remember hire someone to do this for you! Ask anyone here what happens when you dont back up stuff, it ain't pretty! If you think you are safe because it hasnt happened to you then think again. EVERY site is a target!

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