Hackers apparently never sleep, so I spend much of yesterday cleaning up from a hacker attack on several of my sites. This particular hack is quite “successful” since there is very little to indicate to the site’s users or administrators that a hack has occurred. In the background your site could be spewing porn or gambling links to Google, or serving up malware to your customers.
At the Dabbled blog today, I did a writeup on symptoms that your site has been hacked in this manner, solutions for cleanup, and resources you can use if this happens to you.
And everyone:
First off, everyone should do regular spyware checks on your computer. Yes, even if you have a mac. Yes, even though you already run a virus scan. There are a bunch of programs out there, but I typically use Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware. They are both free for personal use. And if you use IE I recommend switching to Firefox. The ad blocking and script blocking add-ons will save you headaches. Also, if you’re using version 8 or below of Acrobat Reader, upgrade to version 9.