I typically don’t see the point in “general life” updates, but it’s been a while, so maybe it’s needed. I usually think that if I don’t have an opinion about something, that’s it’s pointless to talk about simply for the sake of posting something. No ones cares that I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today. That’s all I’m trying to say.
I had my good buddy Matt call me up last night. He’s the one I had set up a WordPress install for a couple months ago. It seems that someone hacked his hosting account/WP install and inserted hundreds of hidden porn links all over his site. For some reason, surfing the page on his Blackberry revealed them, probably since the phones browser didn’t understand the “u style=”display:none” tags. The links were inserted into both the individual pages (single.php) and the footer (footer.php) for every page resulting in a ridiculous amount of links per page. I looked like only the default (kubrick) wordpress theme was affected until I checked out the splash page for the entire site and found them there as well. I had thought it might have been a wordpress exploit that allowed someone to change the themes code, but having it in the splash page (index.html) means they would have had FTP access.
I cleaned up the mess as best I could, changed all their passwords to 12+ characters and I’ll install WP 2.5 tonight just in case. I’ve got the dates/times that the files were changed but I haven’t pulled the access logs yet to cross-reference. I have a pretty good idea what site it came from though since all the links share the same domain and the id= tags are all the same as well.
I’d like to find out exactly how it happened so I can try and prevent it from happening again. Now, with the index.html page hacked, I need to find out if this is a super serious WP exploit or if there was a security failure at the host level. If there is I’m going to recommend they find another host ASAP.
If any of you guys have heard of something similar happening and have any clues or insight, please pass it along. The website the links point to isn’t a porn site but I think they might have had their RSS feed hacked, because all the links are things like domain.com/rss.php?something_adult_sounding.
What the hell is wrong with the universe? Hacking a site to make porn links and then hacking another site to link to those porn links, all to what? Increase your Google rank? This shit has got to stop. Its destroying the interwebs.
I hope everyone had a great Christmas. From the sounds of it most of you did. As for myself, I was celebrating with the in-laws in a three day Festivus marathon. I actually got a bunch of nice stuff. C0D4, Guitar Hero 3 and Assassin’s Creed. I also got numerous giftcards with which I picked up the Bourne Trilogy, the Firefly box set and another 13 month Xbox Live subscription card. Usually I pick those up at online retailers for a discount but I had a WorstBuy gift card that I wasn’t going to use otherwise, so it went towards that. Why people would pay per-month when they can get a card for 1/2 the price is beyond me. I also ordered a few tshirts from Penny Arcade and Jinx.
The big enchilada is that combined birthday and Christmas monitary gifts are enough to afford me the new graphics card I’ve been saving for. I’ll drop $600 at NewEgg some time next week. I’m not in too much of a hurry as component prices typically go down after the holidays. I’m thinking I’m going to go with the 8800GTS series, the 92nm cores, not the bigger ones. Recent benchmarks have put them almost toe-to-toe with their $500 GTX big brothers for half the cost. I’ll also probably need a new power supply to handle the load as well. If there’s anything left over I’ll probably upgrade my aging hard drives or get SATA versions of my optical drives. As much awesome fun as my 360 is bringing, I can’t wait to test drive a new beastly computer. Crysis in 16×12, here I come. 🙂
It’s time for Matt’s annual obligatory Christmas morning post. I’m sitting in the den of my in-laws, waiting on Christmas morning breakfast to be made so I figured it would be a good time to check in. I hope everyone is doing well and spending some time with friends and family. Here’s we’ve been in festivus mode since Sunday. Last night we actually spent the night, opening presents at midnight, and will be here all day. In related news, their new hot tub is up and running, just in time.
I just wanted to take a second and thank all you guys for listening to me ramble on about nothing in particular for yet another year. It means a lot that you guys stop by, read, and chime in from time to time. It makes it all worth doing.
So, have some nog for me, enjoy the day, and a very Merry Christmas to all of you!
My good buddy Dane just called me last night and told me he was setting up his new 360 as he spoke. That’s one more for Matt’s 360 army. I’m going to institute a Wednesday game again if it friggin kills me. He also picked up Call of Duty. Once my brother gets online when he gets back to college, that’ll make five close immediate friends who all have a 360 and CoD4. That’s never happened before. You guys are the ones with the new console, but this is like Christmas for me. The closest I’ve come is 3 of the TCC members having Gears of War, but there was just something about it that didn’t lend itself to casual gaming. Now we’ve got a real shot at some fun.
So, listen and repeat after me and probably to your wives/girlfriends:
“Wednesday is my game night. I play video games with “the guys” on Wednesday. I work hard and deserve some game time. Wednesday is my game night”
Just keep repeating that to yourself until it sinks in.
Chip’s on the verge, Matt is considering one as well. Now all we need is Chris and our team will be complete. lol.
Hopefully this post will serve as the definitive reference for fruit bowling rules and regulations as the sport progresses. If you’d like to learn more about fruit bowling, click “continue reading”.
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