25.9.11

Hacked & Whacked

Today,I had the scare of my life (yes, I love my blog too much! It's my baby!), I've been kinda hacked. It might be a person or a bot, it happened randomly or not-- but whatever, it was so much of a hassle!!! I also felt bad coz some of my friends' blog got infected too. :/ But don't worry all's well now! Google already declared my site clean & malware free and they already fixed everything. :) BUT, I know a lot of blogs--tumblr, wordpress, blogspot--encountered the same problem and I wanna help! Here's what happened...

1.) Last night at 4:30am while making a blog post, I tried to search Audrey Zubiri's pics on my blog (wanted to check if I already blogged about my shoot with her), and that's when the warning messages appeared.

screenshot from Jen S. (thank you so much!)


2.) I just ignored it coz my site still opens via IE and Firefox. It only happens when you open through Chrome. 

3.) After 6 hours I woke up to a million messages on fb and twitter saying they can't access my blog and that their blogs got infected too. :(

ethel's screenshot of her blog

4. I panicked and was acting cuhrazeeeeeeee! Mich had to grab the mouse and shove me away from the computer to prevent further harm to thyself. Haha. Anyway, she just followed Google's instructions & asked me to delete some ads on my blog...

* Verified my blog by inserting a meta tag provided by Google. Just go to www.google.com/webmasters/tools. Just follow the instructions. Insert the meta tag provided after tag (open your template code) and then click save. 

* Click on verify blog under webmasters. After it has been verified, select your blog and a malware message will appear. Click on details and then look for the culprit (provided by google) and delete delete delete! For my blog (and the others as well), the culprit was sitemeter.com!!! The infected url was inserted there via javascript.

* After deleting the infected outside link or html, go back to webmasters tool and click on request for review. Wait for a few hours (so google could check your blog and implement changes, it was 6 hours for me) and your blog will go back to normal again!

* Change your passwords to a secure one. I changed all my passwords, just for safety. :/

Hope this helps! I know a lot of you encountered this before and are experiencing it now. :/ As for me, I'm just thankful this ordeal is over. Thanks to everyone who showed concern, messaged me and helped me! Thanks Mich for helping me! It pays to have a techie/software engineer jowa! LOL. 

Be cyber safe everyone!



13 comments :

  1. I saw this in the morning! I couldn't read your blog:(
    Glad that you fixed the problem.

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  2. i've also received a DM from you on twitter, i didn't open it, cause i'm not expecting one from you, it's something like top 10 .... not sure if it's an infection too..

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  3. I got the alert today, and I was so puzzled since I didnt add anything on my blog that might have contained the malware, BF figured out that the malware was from an app that's linked to your site, and since you are on my blogroll, the browser detects the malware too, was supposed to message you earlier but I saw on your twitter timeline that you already know about it, so I didnt wanna make you panic even more. :D

    No need to worry, Aisa, those malwares are just from random applications that you or people on your blogroll installed. It just makes everyone who has you on their blogroll think that their pages are infected too. So glad that you were able to fix it now.

    Were you able to figure out which app was the culprit?

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  4. @Dee - thank you!!!:) the culprit was sitemeter.com. The malware code was inserted there. That's why I removed sitemeter already as well as some ads on my blog. :/

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  5. I missed all this action! But I'm so so sooo glad you got it all in order! Thank you for the instructions that you posted here, at least we all know what to do now. I would have cried if this happened to my blog, so I know how you must have felt!

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  6. was doing blog walks last night when I came across this too.. good thats sorted out.. thanks for the help too ^^

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  7. Don't just insert any code onto your blog; as much as possible, do the HTML for yourself. Unless you're familiar with code (which I am not haha), it's easy for anyone to insert malware or hidden links in them. I'm glad your blog is okay! :) I'd be upset if anything happened to mine, cos I really work hard to produce interesting articles. And effort mag-pose for outfit photos!

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  8. Thank God everything's okay na with your blog, Paxie! It's really very scary. I know how one's blog means to every blog author.

    What a sigh of relief! :)

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  9. Grabe katakot! msstroke ako pg sakin nang yari to!


    xx Kaye
    Fashion Blogger
    http://thestyleflux.blogspot.com

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  10. Buti nalang okay na blog mo! I love checking your blog pa naman. hehe

    Got freaked out and deleted some ads on my blog too. :)

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  11. haha natawa naman ako kay Kaye!

    Teh pag sakin nangyari yan susugod nalang ako senyo paayos ko kay Mich! =) I'm glad ur back!

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