Posts from January 6-25 have vanished after a hacking attack last night. I am seeking to beef up security and would appreciate advice.
Update: Things are still not working quite right now. Posts disappear as do comments. It was a frantic morning as I sought to restore things – eventually a phone call did it. I was rushing and irritated as I was due to play golf at Kingston Links at 11am. Despite the hacker aggravations I played probably the best golf round I had in more than 20 years shooting 77 off the stick. Stoked!
what’s your system setup? does your provider install wp for you or do you do it yourself?
If wordpress is installed by you, then reinstall wordpress from scratch or if you have a backup of the database reinstall that too.
Having got the spam screen this morning, they’re obviously going for hard and important targets. I guess you can take it as complement.
The hacker screen appeared this morning with lots of swear words and a defense of the attack. I contacted my host in the US and reinstalled a backup dated January 6. If I can access missing posts, I’ll reinstall them. We will talk soon Christina.
Apart from posts all comments that appeared after January 6 also vanished as a consequence of the hack. I feel discomfit as these were valued very highly.
Rabee, I installed WP myself at a US site. What I want is a daily backup – full backup plus incremental backups. The hosting service reinstalled the old backup but I missed files since the backup. They have given me instructions on how to improve security. I’ll read and learn. It could have been much, much worse.
almost all the materials you write in wp is stored in a database not files. usually a mysql database. this is provided by your provider, I hope???? you didn’t install mysql did you?
so what you want is for the mysql database to be backed up repeatedly. you can do this remotely from your office you know. you should ask your provider about it.
. I’m very sorry to hear that your mother passed away.
Harry;
You might point your host in the direction of tarsnap.com. I’ve outlined by backup scheme here.
harry /jacques what is the nature of the attack? Can you point to a website describing?
I’m running a normal type website based on WP. (I must say its bloody marvelous)
jacques – I don’t know if the irony is intended but when I clicked your page I got a blank page with:
“Error establishing a database connection”
Essentially FXH they take over and corrupt your site. Unless you are backed up you can lose everything. I was backed up with a lag of a few weeks and had versions of some posts elsewhere.
The attack was pure vandalism. No particular beef with me. The intent was simply destruction.
FXH — the perils of shared hosting. That blog is still on Dreamhost.
As for the attack here, I’m not familiar enough with what was done to speculate, but the most common attacks are against WordPress holes and improperly setup installations (loose permissions etc).
harry – I guess in six months time you’ll be able to retrieve everything from the way back machine?