Tuesday, February 13, 2007

A ray of hope in storm clouds

The files that I feared had been deleted have turned up. So the level of crime here is more along the lines of a prank than something malicious.

However, I'm still going to have to completely reformat the hard drive and reinstall the files, so that I can remove whatever backdoor the hacker used to access the files.

Looks like this three-day weekend should be enough time to get things back in order.

(fingers crossed, knocking on noggin.)

8 comments:

ByJane said...

wow...all that hard work...anything we can do????

ipsosacto said...

Thanks for the offer, Jane.

I got myself into this problem, and I'll get myself out. But if you know of someone who works in network security who would be willing to do a little tutoring, I'd love to contact that person.

Anonymous said...

i forget what OS you said you're using, but i think it was linux...
if it's debian, there is a wonderful online manual for securing a debian system (lots of these concepts are applicable regardless of the linux flavour)

here is the link (http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/)

ipsosacto said...

Thanks for the link. The server is Ubuntu, so Debian is the perfect place to start.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad that the files have showed up!

ipsosacto said...

I've finished formatting and reinstalling the basic operating system. Now I've got to install the server applications and then I can re-create the web sites from the files I copied off before formatting the disks. Looks like a long weekend.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to hear about getting hacked! It's great to see that you didn't lose everything... Is there an ETA on when the blog list will be back up? I'm looking forward to its return :)

ipsosacto said...

The server is back. The reinstallation of the web site will take another day, maybe two. I have to work around a Honey-Do weekend.