Does the term “Hack the Planet!” mean anything to you?
For most of you that were (or are) running older versions of WordPress installations on your hosting platforms you are probably not aware that you are in fact open to being hacked! Towards the end of last month one of my hosting accounts with HostGator was hacked and several of my blog sites were down whilst I was away in Cape Town. Talk about ruining a perfectly good holiday.
I immediately contacted the HostGator support team and as per usual they were all over it. They got on the case straight away and started helping me to restore a backup of all my websites that had been hacked! I really want to recommend the guys at HostGator for their timeous response and fantastic efforts to get me up and running across the board by the time I got back to my holiday apartment that evening.
The second thing I thought to check up on was my Adsense account. Phew! Slight panic but all was ok. That would have crushed my soul on that vacation. There I was spending my money with the thought that suddenly it was spent before I could possibly spend it myself.
Now as I mentioned earlier this happened because I was running on an older version of WordPress. After getting back home to Durban, I immediately started looking for causes and resolutions to the problem which I had while away and came across a number of articles online that highlighted the vulnerability to be in older versions of WordPress that are installed by users all over the world. (Isn’t it nice to know that you’re not the only one that gets hit hard). I fired up my HostGator CPanel and upgraded each and every installation of WordPress for each of my blog websites, making sure I wasn’t open to being hacked the same way again.
So make sure you all go and check that you update all your installations of WordPress right away to avoid the same issue I had while being on vacation down in Cape Town i.e. don’t let the Saudi Arabia Hacker ruin your day!
Here is a screenshot of the page:
DarrynRex.com Hacked!
