Reasons to Take Security Upgrades Seriously — Hacked WordPress Sites

WordPress 2.0.7 was released yesterday. Click here for details of the fixed vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, that was not soon enough for several web masters who run SEO sites. A hacker going by the name of FuckingPirate has taken down three popular SEO sites so far and published a hit list with more.

(hat tip: seoblackhat)

This is a reality of running a site on the Internet. Here are some tips for minimizing the damage:

• Keep up to date
  • Subscribe to the announcement page using RSS for software you use
  • Highlight these subscriptions so they don’t get lost in your feed reader
• Backups
  • Backup your site often
  • Store your backup on a different server
• Passwords
  • Don’t use common word passwords that could be found in a dictionary
  • Use unique passwords you don’t also use on other sites
  • If one site gets compromised it can lead to the same user id / password combo being exploited on other sites
• Comments
  • Keep track of your comments
  • If they can’t hack your site, they might settle for defacing your comments