Keep Your Blog From Getting Hacked!

July 18, 2008 · Filed Under · 2 Comments 

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this Wordpress blog got hacked! I was looking at my Google Webmaster tools when I noticed something was wrong when I saw in the “What Googlebot Sees” section that my site had the words of a bunch of prescription and illegal drugs and credit card scams in it’s content! SAY WHAT!! I darn near fell off my chair, this is what happens to other people, not to me! I then researched the problem and noticed that a malicious script was being added to my blog pages and adding hundreds of these drug and credit card links at the bottom of most of my blog pages. Yikes!!

What I Did Wrong (So you won’t make the same mistakes!)

  1. Upgrade Today! – I did NOT keep my version of Wordpress updated to the newest version. I fell way behind and the hackers look for older versions because they lack a lot of the security measures that the new versions have. Here are the details on how to upgrade Wordpress. Don’t procrastinate, do it today!!
  2. Re-Do Your Passwords! – I am talking about the passwords that you use to access your blog admin section and the password for your database if you have your domain hosted. If those passwords are something simple like a common word, followed by 2 numbers, and you are using an old version of your blogging software, you will get hacked, guaranteed! It is just a question of when, not if. A good password is T5f?2y3Pd4!, and a bad password is jimmy12 or lovetoblog7. I found this really cool website by Microsoft that will test your passwords for you and tell you if they are strong or terrible.
  3. Back-Up You Blog. – Finally, it is really important to back-up your blog often so if you do get hacked, you may have a clean version of your blog to fall back on.

So have you ever been hacked? Or do you have a great piece of advice to add to this post on how to avoid being hacked? Please leave a comment so we can keep it from happening to others. Thanks!

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Comments

2 Responses to “Keep Your Blog From Getting Hacked!”

  1. Zombie Money on July 26th, 2008 12:10 am

    How do you think they got a hold of your account? I have blogger so I’m not sure how common it is with Blogger?

  2. Kyle on July 26th, 2008 2:32 pm

    Hey Zombie, my best guess is they cracked my password, probably for my database, but perhaps thru Wordpress. Blogger is just as susceptible, keep it updated with the newest version and make those passwords really strong and you should be OK.

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