Help! My Blog Got Hacked
I don’t know how many evil spirits possessed this person who took the time to hack my blog and include un-related content into my blog’s layout. This unwanted content made my blog get indexed for keywords that are not at all what my blog is all about!
One more problem that this hacking brought is that my blog is now getting AdSense ads that are for the bad content that the hacker placed on my blog. Although I’m not earning a 6-figure income from this blog, the AdSense earnings I used to get was a big help in putting food on the table. Now I’m only earning peanuts.
I was able to get rid of the code that the hacker embedded on my blog’s layout. However, Google’s still thinking that my site’s optimized for the wrong keywords. Although I’m thinking that performing more aggressive SEO techniques might help recover my blog’s search engine standing, unfortunately, I currently don’t have the time and tools to make this work.
Have you ever experienced such situation? How did you handle it? Help please.
image credits to sxc.hu
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POSTED IN: Blogging for Dollars, Online Money Making Scams and Warnings
11 opinions for Help! My Blog Got Hacked
Michael Clark
May 1, 2008 at 2:41 am
1. Audit all of your WordPress (I assume you’re suing WP) files to make sure the ones on your system are the official ones. Are you running the most recent version (2.5.1) of WP? See http://www.planetmike.com/goto/720 for my system that automates the scanning.
2. Check all of your posts for any “extra” content.
3. How did the person get in? Do you have the web server logs available?
4. For the time being, remove all of the Adsense ads from your site. You don’t want your stats messed up for being the wrong content.
5. Log into your Google Webmaster account and see if there are any notes from Google for you.
6. Google yourself to see if Google is warning people about your site. Google gives a warning if your site has malware or spyware on it.
7. Change all of your passwords.
8. Protect your wp-admin, wp-includes and wp-content directories.
9. Look at all of your plugins. Are they up-to-date? Are they needed? Simplify your system to reduce the number of possible holes in the security of your site.
Char
May 1, 2008 at 3:01 am
Two of my sites were hacked too - much in the same way and result as yours. I have gotten it back to the point where the adsense on the interior pages is showing relevant ads, but the home page still isn’t.
Any one have any ideas? I may just take adsense off the home page for now.
Trench Reynolds
May 1, 2008 at 3:11 am
I don’t even use adsense on my personal blogs anymore. I’ve actually been making better money with not-contextual product ads.
Frank Haywood
May 1, 2008 at 7:36 am
It sounds like the XMLRPC hack.
There’s a file called xmlrpc.php which sits in the root of your blog. In version 2.3.1 (and probably lots of earlier versions too) it was found that it could be used by third parties to take control of your blog, and Wordpress quickly released an update to prevent that.
It’s a good idea to update to the latest version, but if you don’t have time to do that, just grab the latest xmlrpc.php and replace the one that’s installed on your blog.
-Frank Haywood
Joseph
May 1, 2008 at 9:18 am
Just upgrade to the newer version of wordpress. If you already have just re update it.
Alfa
May 2, 2008 at 12:01 am
Wow! Thanks for the response and all the advice. I’m going to ‘try’ to implement the WordPress tweaks this week.
Sean.Ray
May 2, 2008 at 8:27 pm
This should be able to be resolved by re-installed the wordpress. This wouldn’t be too hard.
The only thing you need to do is to think about how to avoid it again.
Mark
May 3, 2008 at 3:34 am
Funny why people are spending far too much time on hacking other poeple’s blog when there are ligit ways of making some good money/success for yourself…
I wonder what was the reason for the hacker in this…
Mark
http://www.212articles.com
Sharing Adsense Revenues with writers/contributors.
Gian Brown
May 3, 2008 at 7:31 am
There are many ways to hacked an account. One of my site was hacked too, same way and result as yours. In my case I don’t even use adsense, I wasn’t able to retrieve my site anymore. Let it charge to experience.
__________
gianski
What Type of Freelance Work are You Doing?
May 12, 2008 at 5:32 pm
[…] one that I’ve recently experienced is the Murphy’s Law […]
Richie Aubin
May 14, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Interesting read some of your posts, my industry is drying up so am thinking of different ways of generating money! One reason I am looking to move away from Real Estate is because we got hacked last week by some turkish hackers that destroyed our server through a Joomla website that they found an exploit on.
I share your pain, I can’t understand why these people do it as in our case there was nothing to gain, no money to be made, we don’t even know the people, and certainly haven’t upset anyone (not that I know of!).
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