Well…. I think we’re making progress. We have the basic site back up without the infected parts. We don’t have any past content yet, but we’re working on that. I have added the header logos so it’ll start looking a little more normal. I’ll have to add all the plugins and blogroll and categories too.
Stay tuned…….
Glad to start having you back. I miss Bits & Pieces!
Take your time Jonco. You don’t have to rush putting it all back together right away. No sense in stressing over trying to keep us entertained. In my opinion anyway.
Jonco let me know when you find the guy that hacked the site Inf. and i will go drag his sorry a$$ out of his mom’s basement and string him up on that nut hanger you had on the N B site and we can use him as a pinata at the BABBQ.
Keep up the good work. and get the buy u a beer back up you deserve one for all you have been through the last few of weeks.
Lol
few xx week’s
spell checked but forgot to proof read.
Take your time Jonco. You don’t have to rush putting it all back together right away. No sense in stressing over trying to keep us entertained. In my opinion anyway.
But you’ve heard that before, I’m sure
Thank goodness you are back on. Wanted to check the site last night, and thought we had lost you for good, or someone else was trying to butt in over your territory. I so enjoy your site everyday and hearing about Gus and the new dog. It would have been like losing an old friend. Great to see you back on.
Good work Jonco. As Scott said, take your time! I love b&p but there are other things in life… while we’re all waiting we can go read a book or take a walk outside, we won’t keel over and die!
Ditto, what Scott said.
Lol ALN, I’d be glad to help y’all.
Well that just sucks, I was getting that flashing “your computer has a virus” message a couple of days ago. Pace yourself, it’s all over when it’s not fun anymore, you know?
What exactly was the damage done by the hack? My laptop shit the bed (trojan virus) and I hadn’t gone to any ‘questionable’ sites or opened anything odd. I was wondering if it was related…
PS- I wasn’t redirected and didn’t get any strange virus messages except from AVG (my antivirus software)
Thank goodness you’re back! It seemed weird to suddenly loose touch with our global, dysfunctional, quasi-family. Take your time! When you get stressed out, let Gus take over the controls for a while. I hope you haven’t completely lost the old posts – that was a compilation of some classic stuff. It is my hope that the person(s) who derailed B&P should find their own computer in bits and pieces (if not some part of their anatomy). Hang in there & welcome back!
I just wanted to send my *condolences*. I have had my site hacked like this before and it is a horrible feeling with tons of work. Hang in there!
In my estimation, hackers are only one level above child molesters and Barack Obama and should be rounded up and summarily executed! I’m glad your back Jonco.
Someday maybe somebody could explain to me exactly WHY people hack websites and create viruses. Is it just the same as an arsonist or a rooftop sniper except more anonymous, or is there more to it?
@(Another) Scott
seriously? child molesters and barack obama? you lump obama in with child molesters? and don’t even get me started on the popularized misuse of the term hacker – ‘hacker’ is a distinct COMPLIMENT. it’s like calling the script-kiddie-cracker who did this a genius, in his own language. which is my language. you basically just called obama a child molester (i really like obama) and called some scumm of the internet bastard an absolute prodigy with the highest of skills and impeccable morals.
basically there is nothing at all i can remotely agree with in your comment – except the indirect inference of negativity for child molesters (even though you sandwiched this negative intent between an unintended compliment and the full name of our great president).
@DJ
there are a lot of reasons people hack websites (and software, hardware, and even things like pianos and cars if you are willing to accept the traditional definition for the term ‘hacker’).
regarding the question as you meant it (and sidestepping my bias against your misuse of the term), people ‘crack’ websites in particular for at least 3 reasons:
1. ego-boost. as in, “yay, i did it”. this is not likely the goal for this recent attack on B&P, but is often the goal when the site owner doesn’t even know they were hacked. some grey area exists here, as people who crack into some sites might benefit from being successful, but if the benefit is monetary then i don’t label the attack as an ego-boost. some non-monetary benefits may include cheating in online games, for example (think of facebook and how easy it would be to give yourself millions of dollars in fake money in Space Wars or some similar game — if you cracked into the site that is)
2. harm. as in, “i hate jonco so i cracked the security and caused a serious headache over there”. again, not likely the reason THIS time, since the common result from this intent is the deletion or corruption of valuable data. sometimes harm may be directed outside the network, possibly including compromising a person’s security by capturing and freely distributing a person’s private info like credit card numbers, social security info, etc. if the attacker sells this data or uses the credit info themselves, i would say that harm was not the intent so much as monetary gain.
3. which brings us to monetary gain. right, the above 2 are ‘corner cases’ which i describe with caveats that under some circumstances attacks which look to be motivated by these intentions are actually motivated by money. this appears to be the case in this particular attack on B&P. these sorts of attacks might work as i described in the above two caveats, or may be more subtle like modifying a site’s advertisements to make visitors see the attacker’s ads instead of the proper ads. why do this? ads are tracked and the more they are seen and clicked on, the more money the ad purveyor makes. an attacker could inject ads into a site that make the attacker a profit (and reduce the profit to the original site owner, but less often directly cost the site owner any money, at least not until they have to work hard or pay someone to help remove these injected ads). other financially motivated attacks are for-hire cracks. not likely the case here, but imagine if you will that Exxon Mobile wanted Shell Oil’s website to fail (companies picked at random, i have no inside info on these companies) — they COULD do it themselves, but easier and safer they could hire a cracker to go do it for them. in fact, there is a whole black market providing anonymous crackers for hire as well as bot-nets for rent. renting a bot-net, btw, is a relatively new black market phenomenon. when you install some crappy free software that includes malware you don’t know about, you become an witting member of a ‘zombie-net’ – which is essentially a large group of machines that will (but aren’t yet) perform any task commanded of them by a central controller (in this case, the cracker that owns the zombie-net). when our fictitious version Exxon wants to attack Shell Oil, they could buy a block of time on that zombie net, which when it is performing actions would be called a bot-net. some actions sound mundane, like having hundreds of thousands of computers all programmed to visit the victim’s website repeatedly for 24 hours. though sounding mundane, this would effectively put the victim’s site off-line because no legitimate web traffic could take place. this is financially motivated because, well, bot-nets cost money which leads to the prevalence of trying to make money through their use. common bot-nets that make money often sell viagra, etc (yup, if you get the spam emails for viagra and try to buy some, the computer ‘hosting’ the website you buy from stands a high probability of being some home-user’s infected computer. in fact, if you regularly download and installed crappy free software on a windows PC, your computer may very well have processed financial transactions selling (fake? cloned?) viagra, cialis, etc to unwitting spam-email-responders.
So, those are the basic reasons for “hacking” websites. or more properly, for cracking computer security in any manner (websites are only a small piece of the pie).
—
just for completeness, reasons for Hacking including:
1. wishing a product, rightfully belonging to you, would act differently – and chosing to do something about it (ie: ‘i added a turbo-charger to my lawn mower’ is a Good Hack)
2. finding that a product, rightfully belonging to you, performs actions you DONT WANT – and doing something about it (ie: ‘i figured out that those 5 year old movie previews at the start of ever DVD i own, those ones the DVD player refuses to skip because the MPAA wants to force me to watch, can be removed if i rip the DVD to my computer, remove the crap i dont want, then burn back to a DVD’ equals a somewhat simplistic albeit Good Hack)
3. finding that a ______________, rightfully yours to _____________, would be better if _______________ — and doing something about it.
see the trend there? hacking is generally ethical (sometimes in grey areas of the law, but mostly because the law is written to err on the side of enforceability) and generally GOOD (ie: make things better).
Mozart has been described, properly, as a great musical hacker… whomever invents a new whatever, the new whatever disrupting previous beliefs about what possible or useful in the related field, is almost certainly a Hacker in that field. and the process of learning, experimenting, and making the new whatever is a Good Hack.
-bit