The resurrection of Pharma’s Cutting Edge
Welcome back, dear readers. I’ve missed you.
In case you failed to notice (I know…it’s highly unlikley), Pharma’s Cutting Edge has been absent from it’s usual rest stop along the information highway for the past week. The blog went down last Saturday morning. And when I say went down, I mean it was ransacked, hacked to bits. The theme, plug-ins, images…all gone. In their place were some twenty HTML ads for Viagra in the root directory.
I learned some things from this episode that were a surprise to me, despite what I thought was my diligence to protect my online assets.
First, when known security leaks exist in an online application you gotta plug ‘em or use different software. I made the foolish mistake of hosting this blog on Yahoo (which provides literally NO TECHNICAL SUPPORT for Wordpress or the MySQL-based data you’ve generated). Yahoo was using an old version of Wordpress that was eminently hackable. I didn’t bother looking for a way to upgrade Wordpress myself, and I should have. This just goes to show that it doesn’t matter how secure your web hosting service is if the software your using on it is leaky.
Second, never allow a web hosting service to manage your online presence unless they fully support you. Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn this twice the hard way. I also use another non-caring host for my corporate site. Of course, I didn’t realize they weren’t on the job until I needed them. KEY Lesson: test your host’s service BEFORE you need it. I ignored advice to do so previously.
Finally, make redundant backups. For my desktop apps I always make two backups–one local and one online. It’s important to do the opposite for online applications. Make an online backup and an offline backup as often as needed. Again, it’s commonsense, but I almost lost my blog’s images this time. Fortunately, I had offline copies of most of them.
I couldn’t leave this post without a final jab at Yahoo. They don’t deserve your hosting business. When a hosted site goes down due to malicious activity there is no excuse for a web host to ignore pleas for help from its customers. Fortunately, I have now have a web host that understands the importance of customer service.
