aka R’acquel

Jesus - another freakin’ attack over at www.newtownmums.com.au

..where it’s publishing spam into new posts. I’ve had two emails i received in my inbox get published onto the website too.

A vulnerability with wordpress - or is my server with MDWebhosting still screwed?

I’ve had no luck in searching for answers to this issue via google.

I’m not feeling secure about wordpress now - what if this account hosted via BlueHost gets hacked in the same way?

It’s demoralising.

Why does spam exist? Why is it here in this world? What benefits do hackers and spammers get from their work? Why do they do it? I don’t get it.

Any other webhosting companies out there that can migrate my account away from MD Webhosting?! What a pig’s breakfast.

Just how badly are these guyz up shit creek atm?!

*gah*

A big market for other webhosting companies offering “MD Webhosting Refugee” specials to compensate for this shit alright.

This fuck up would hurt my buisness so hard if i only did webhosting (but hey, it’s already hurting!).

Fortunate to be an all-rounder in the world of design in the meanwhile :S

Like, shit happens …and then people invent toilet paper. [/vent]

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Hmm - i’m lucky to have two webhosts. All sites on my MDWebhosting account are down, displaying hacked by root-x. It’s 2 days of downtime now - no email or ftp. No response from tech support via email, and the phone-support numbers don’t work. One of them is constantly engaged, while the other one just doesn’t work.

All i have is an announcement which says,

“The Nebula server is undergoing an O/S reload. Once this is complete all data will be restored.”

That doesn’t say much/enough.

Not good. A google search revealed to me a few articles that about 5 servers got hacked on December 20th 2007. Caused by failure to correct security profiles, with IP blocking systems & firewalls not being adquate? Hmm.. they’ve had two months to address this. A new attack or did they just not get around to securing things to prevent it from happening?

I’m not too phased, in that webhosting companies will always have their seriously bad hair days but this is not looking good - especially when my accounts at Bluehost have not experienced as many server-related problems in comparison. Time to move-on? *sighs* ~ Maybe.

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Got a reply from Hostgator with regards to my DMCA complaint. It was one user with two accounts and they’ve both been suspended. Looking forward to seeing Google Adsense Inc’s response.

UPDATE: Got an apology from the user… in their opinion - he/she thinks that if site owners don’t want people to use their content, they should not use the RSS feed system on their website …and that they should not submit their feeds to www.feedster.com

Hello - i didn’t “submit” my feed to Feedster, and just because my RSS feed might’ve been picked up by them, it doesn’t make it ok for others to steal content from my site for commercial gain through their services.

Have submitted a complaint to Feedster.

I don’t know what RSS is, i can’t make sense of it. I’d ideally like it switched off if having it on makes people think it’s OK to infringe on copyright, but I don’t understand the benefits of it either.

I’m so sick of of these sploggers atm and i’m hardly the only one who feels that way. Bah. Just needed to fucking vent as it’s put me into a downright foul mood to spend so much time formulating the DMCA. The upside, is that i’ve learnt how to do one and it’s been good to see positive action taken.

UPDATE: Recieved good feedback from Feedster with suggestions on how i can take some measures to stop engines crawling the site.

Thanks Mrs.Lifecruiser for helping me to understand how the RSS feed functions better and how i can turn the ruddy thing off in Wordpress. Enjoying what i’ve learnt through the experience by choosing to do something about it and it appears that I still have a lot more learn!

I edit my posts A LOT too! Always reviewing my use language & proof reading all the time. I spend more time editing that i do writing, so i hope that’s not sending notices to others that “something new” has popped up on my site when i’ve just changed a few words or sentences around! :O

tpv

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Received an email from the Abuse Administrator from Hostgator and a formal DMCA complaint has been forwarded against the sites listed here.

A formal DMCA complaint has also been forwarded to Google via postal mail as well. So far, so good, although it’s taken me over 4 hours to press forward with it. Have i wasted my time? Who knows what will happen next.

The following websites are guilty of copyright infringement for stealing content from my website and from other people’s blogs too.

http://www.agents3.info/two.htm
http://www.agents4.info/licenses.htm
http://www.agents5.info/Sickness.htm
http://www.agents6.info/place.htm
http://www.agents7.info/Please.htm
http://www.agents11.info/who.htm
http://www.base5.info/Journeys.htm
http://www.base7.info/Rainbow.htm
http://www.base12.info/power.htm
http://www.base13.info/autism.htm
http://www.base16.info/Lightning.htm
http://www.base16.info/March.htm
http://www.bay1.info/Doh-.htm
http://www.bay10.info/weather.htm
http://www.clicks13.info/Because.htm
http://www.clicks15.info/hrs.htm

Many are displaying as internal server errors now, but i’ve reported many of them to Google.

How To Report Splogs To Google
You can report offending Splogs abusing Google Adsense by clicking the “Ads by Goo(ooooo)gle” link that’s listed near the advertisements. At the next screen, you’ll see a link at the bottom where it says: “Send Google your thoughts on the site or the ads you just saw” - click that and you’ll see a link where you can report the Google Adsense violation & copyright infringement as well.

I’ve done a whois search on all of these domain names but I can’t access any details to contact the owners. The only tangible contact information I can find is that the sponsoring registrar for ALL of them is:

Direct Information Pvt. Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com (R159-LRMS)

No luck in finding more info at http://www.publicdomainregistry.com

I spoke to live support at http://www.hostgator.com asking if the websites could be hosted with this service because ALL of the DNS name servers of these SPLOGS were pointing to:

Name Server:NS446.HOSTGATOR.COM
Name Server:NS445.HOSTGATOR.COM

Live support said that it probably was hosted with www.hostgator.com and gave me an email address to forward a complaint. Just sent my email to Hostgator - so here’s hoping that i can gain some assistance in pursuing the matter further.

Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter plugin for Wordpress has been useful with embeding the copyright at the end of my posts on the splogs.

Does anyone know how to impose fines for content theft?

Like, not happy - but i’m definitely doing something about it now!

UPDATE 27/03/07 6:33PM: Email received from Hostgator that the issue has been forwarded to abuse.

Nang! Not impressed with the bug of not being able to add categories and other administrative functions that follow through with the error of “you do not have permission to do this”.

I tried contacting MDWebshosting about it - they say it’s a configuration of wordpress error, in that the user doesnt have access to add the category. This is a known bug with Wordpress unfortunately, sometimes it happens sometimes it doesnt.

Strangely enough, my other account hosted with Bluehost seems have a work & then not work style of pattern. Maybe it could be a server-related issue? - i don’t know but it’s definitely the 2.1(2.1.1) that has the problem even upon a fresh install without plug-ins & extra add ons.

I’ve managed to find one HACK which helped me overcome the paralysis, TEMPORARILY. Enough to at least make critical changes i couldn’t do before.

Use the Firefox browser.

Go to tools > options. Click on “content”. Uncheck “enable java” & “enable java script”. Make the changes necessary and then check the java boxes again.

Works ok for me because FF isn’t my primary browser so i don’t have to switch on/off/on/off etc. Atm - i’m finding 2.1.1 to be fairly buggy. It’s got the feeling of a dog’s vomit reflux over here so in the meanwhile, in pursuit of the anti-acids to work around it!

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