2021-06-07

Yes, Vridar Was Hacked!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

As far as I can tell, the break-in was confined to a single author account. Thanks to David Fitzgerald for alerting Neil and me.

We seem to be back to normal. Let us know if you see anything odd!

widowfield [at] gmail [dot] com

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Tim Widowfield

Tim is a retired vagabond who lives with his wife and multiple cats in a 20-year-old motor home. To read more about Tim, see our About page.

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3 thoughts on “Yes, Vridar Was Hacked!”

David Fitzgerald says:

2021-06-07 14:23:16 GMT+0000 at 14:23

That said, if anyone DOES need to know about Eastern European mail-order Brides, I did take screen shot pictures…
-DF

Reply
Geoff says:

2021-06-07 14:36:44 GMT+0000 at 14:36

Perhaps a password guessing attack (there are a LOT of these going on, I get thousands of guesses per day across the sites I administer). You must not have any weak or potentially guessable passwords, this is how all the clients and friends I know who were hacked got in trouble. Install (e.g.) Wordfence and scan for malware in case anything nasty has been installed. Check for new users with admin access. Archive your recent backups.
I was given a site to fix which redirected users to an ad platform only in certain circumstances, like when using an iphone, but then only sometimes, making it very hard to pin down.
Hopefully the user compromised was not an admin, and then you are probably fine. If an admin user, then assume the worst.

Reply
1. Tim Widowfield says:
  
  2021-06-07 14:59:13 GMT+0000 at 14:59
  
  I’m seriously looking at two-factor authentication, despite the hassle. WordPress sites are under constant attack by botnets.
  
  Reply

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Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “A troll is someone who ignores what is being said and continues their own agenda without engaging with the logic…” Dec 21, 03:26
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I am still once more responding, so that you do not think that I am impolite or that I am…” Dec 20, 07:22
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I re-read my earlier reply and can see how you took it as “emotional” — but I can assure you…” Dec 18, 02:43
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I simply asked you to tell me what it is that you think I misunderstand or what, specifically, I am…” Dec 17, 20:26
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