Before I get to the story, considering the average age of my readers is somewhere between 65 and getting a shout out from Willard Scott, let me bridge the generation gap(s) and explain to you that “PWNED!” means “owned”…and that ain’t good.
As I was getting ready to head to the airport last week for some extended travel, I got an email from Matt McGee, great citizen and SEMMY’s Overlord:
“Hey Brian,
I think your blog has been hacked. Check the source code….
Matt”
My first thought was, “F************ck!”. My second thought was, “Maybe I got hacked because I’m so Big Time now?”. And my third thought was, “No, you dumbass. You got hacked because you treat this blog like court-mandated community service time and you never got around to updating your Wordpress.”
It was really perfect timing by whomever did it. I was going to be at our Annual Meeting and then flying to visit friends in Scottsdale. I had neither the time nor the inclination to fix it and it just didn’t piss me off enough to make it a priority. So, said hacker got a free week’s worth of links to spammy doorway pages for stuff that would make my junk longer, harder, and erect for up to 24 hours…or my money back.
What’s it like being hacked? On one hand it’s kind of annoying. But even that wasn’t all that annoying because I wasn’t going to be the one to have to fix it. There are some really good SEO’s out there that know coding and server security. I’m not one of them. I just do things that build lots of high quality links and then watch the Brinks trucks back up to fill my coffers. There’s plenty of amazing coding and security talent out there for much cheaper than my time. I also don’t sell advertising on this site and I don’t really care if it ranks for anything, so it really didn’t affect me.
On the other hand, I’m kind of proud of dude. They saw an opportunity to build some links and ran with it. Those are the people I try to hire. If the effort was worth the minimal temporal value to a parasitic host of his spam, good for him.
Whatever hassle it provided was well worth it for two reasons. One, I learned that people actually read this thing and they cared that it was down. I was really surprised at the number and mix of folks who let me know there was a problem and offered to help out. I genuinely appreciate that and it motivates me to spend more time on this thing.
Two, I was introduced to Bapin at eBizzSol. Bapin was recommended to me by Andy Hagans, somebody whose opinion I nearly universally trust and who was similarly hacked last year. Bapin runs eBizzSol and I know how busy they are, but he spent a lot of his personal time taking care of me. He got in there like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction and cleaned it up like a real pro. I pretty much hate most web service providers, but I was genuinely amazed by the professionalism and talent that Bapin brought to the table. Not only did he get me out of a bind, but he earned a ton of my business going forward. Getting a recommendation out of me is like taking food out of Britney Spears’ hands, but I wholeheartedly recommend Bapin for whatever projects he may be able to assist you with.
After it was fixed, I sent some info about the exploit and where it was going to my favorite Googler. Then I filed a reinclusion request with an explanation of the links to weird neighborhoods just like everyone else can.
So, in summary:
1. I got pwned.
2. I didn’t really care.
3. It cost me no money.
4. I still didn’t really care that much.
5. People told me they loved me.
6. I started to care.
7. I was referred to an Indian superhero/designer/programmer.
8. I will probably update my Wordpress regularly going forward.
9. My traffic didn’t dip at all because I have built a defensible audience.
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