Reflections on Being Hacked

As many of you may have realized, FreshBlogger was hacked yesterday. It was the notorious Sorry to bother you.. post that other WordPress users have seen mysteriously appearing on their blogs. I did respond by changing passwords and immediately upgrading to the latest version of WordPress.

Anyone with a website is at risk of being attacked by a hacker. Bloggers are clearly no exception. In fact, I expected that this blog would eventually be hacked in just this way because I haven’t kept up with upgrading lately. Other things in my life have been taking up more time and are, frankly, a much higher priority than this blog.

I wrote a quick post yesterday to assure my readers that I had noticed the fact that I had been hacked and responded to it appropriately. You will also note the sarcasm in the tone of my post. If you read the comments on the post, you’ll see that someone, possibly the hacker him or herself, left a message telling me I should be thankful it wasn’t a malicious attack.

To respond to that in more depth, I have to say that I’m not thankful my blog was attacked by a hacker. I would have upgraded sooner or later and, honestly, I back up my blog and to be hacked maliciously wouldn’t have been the end of the world for me. I could have restored everything completely within a couple of hours or a day or two, at worst.

I consider all hacking to be malicious regardless of the intent and I’ll tell you why. Think back to when you were a child. Your mother always told you to stay away from the hot stove, right? Suppose you had never touched the stove, but mother wanted you to learn a good lesson, so she took your hand and put it briefly against a hot burner. The burn would hurt like hell, but a real accidental encounter with the hot stovetop could have been far worse.

The point is, though, that there may never have been an accident in the first place. Even more importantly, you are all thinking about what a terrible mother she would be to do something like this. You’re right. There are plenty of more constructive ways to teach a lesson.

Another example: If you came home and found a stranger sitting in your living room and they explained that the lock on the back door was just too easy to pick, how would you react? If it happened to me, it’s a strong possibility that this person would be breathing through a trach tube and wearing orthopedic shirts for a long time. Hello?! Breaking into someone’s house is a crime and so is breaking into someone’s website.

When you look at these recent hacking incidents in that light, you see that this person isn’t doing anyone a favor. Most of these blogs would probably never be hacked anyway, and even if they were, the harm would have been minimal at best. Who cares if FreshBlogger goes away for a couple hours or a day? How many violins will play for this blog if it disappears forever?

Sure, some of you may miss my considerable wit and charm (and, yes, ladies, I’m single), but the sun will still rise for you, and for me. I do believe that some of my posts may have touched people and helped them through some things in their lives or given them some useful information that allowed them to be more productive or successful. I’m happy to have been able to do that, too. At the same time, I’m not so full of myself to think that they couldn’t have found the same inspiration or information somewhere else if they had kept searching.

The bottom line is that I didn’t need to be reminded to upgrade my blog and the blogosphere likewise does not need a self-appointed savior to get after everyone to upgrade. Regardless of intentions, thanks, but no thanks.

P.S. For an interesting, but dated conversation on this topic, check out this slashdot thread.

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1. Don’t Get Hacked
2. Matt Cutts Blog Has Been Hacked
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4. Potentially Dangerous WordPress Vulnerability
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