Last week WordPress users found out that older versions of their software had a security fault and hackers had started to take advantage of this vulnerability – by creating new admin accounts, deleting blog articles and posting spam, often in the form of porn. One of the highest profile bloggers around, Robert Scoble, discovered on Saturday (5th September) that his blog had deleted two months’ worth of entries – for someone like Scoble that’s a lot of articles and a lot of time. He also found that:
this time they also put some malicious code on my archive pages. Google sent me an email saying they had removed my blog from its index.
Mashable and Techcrunch broke this story on the same day and this is why it may have come to the attention of Scoble and may others so quickly. With an alarming headline: WordPress Attack Underway: WordPress Users Must Upgrade [ALERT] their opening paragraph read:
If you’re running a self-hosted WordPress blog that isn’t up-to-date (version 2.8.4), you’re advised to upgrade immediately to the latest version of the software to avoid an ongoing attack. Users of WordPress.com hosted blogs are not affected.
Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, also urged users of the older versions to upgrade to the latest 2.8.4 version of WordPress before the worm started destroying their sites. He makes a very good point in an article that he wrote on Saturday:
A stitch in time saves nine. Upgrading is a known quantity of work, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)
I like this analogy of taking your vitamins as many of us fail to do this. How often have you said that you must back up your data? Or that you’ll upgrade your latest anti-virus? Or upgrade some software? Well, as the old adage goes: “prevention is better than cure”. If you’re using a blogging platform or other social media site, now may be the time to create those backups and make sure that you have the latest, safest version of the software in place.
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