The WordPress exploit that happened to several of my blogs was really a big hassle to me. What would have been a light weekend in terms of work load became a race to the latest WordPress update for me. I was emailed by a Bluehost tech support telling me that my account was hacked. I have 7 days to upgrade my blogs or they will suspend my account. Naturally, I panicked. I cannot afford to be suspended. I monetize most of my blogs and advertisers will leave me if I go offline for days.
Apparently, WordPress versions lower than 2.6.5 had some security issues that were exploited (by whom I have no idea). I checked my files and I found this alien file, remv.php in my themes folder. So what did I do to resolve the exploit and get rid of remv.php? I uninstalled everything. I made a clean up. And when every thing’s uninstalled already, that’s when I installed the latest version available in Simple Scripts, WordPress 2.6.5. I used Fantastico before but they release WordPress latest versions at a very late date. As of this writing, Fantastico still uses 2.6.3 in their installations.
If you haven’t upgraded your WordPress yet, I suggest you do so now. If you have Simple Scripts in your cpanel, make use of their services. Or if not, you can always do so manually.
on Dec 4th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
thanks for visiting my site Sasha! I love your blog also. I’d like to link to yours if it is acceptable for you. Yes, it is a curse in mine line of work that I can’t always post super duper posts. I try and keep them interesting even if they have to be short. I find that balancing the time it takes to work on my stained glass and the time that it takes to run a quality blog requires a delicate time balance. But…in the end I must stay true to my art and hope that people subscribe or “follow” my blog on a regular basis. Fluff posts never do appeal to me so I try and write quality stuff. Some times I’m more gifted at prose than others. At any rate, your blog is top notch and I appreciate your work. With gratitude, Laurie B. (please stop back at my blog to let me know if a link is okay by you)