Don’t Let The Wolf Get You
If you are a self-hosted blogger, like me, one of the worst things that can happen is some annoying little so and so manages to get into your blog and cause havoc. A blog “hack” can be anything from someone adding new posts, without your say so, to people injecting links or adverts to earn themselves money from your work. To the more worrying cases where blogs have been completely taken over and all content remove and the times where they are left downloading malware to any visitors computer.
I’ve personally suffered a few different hacks across my time as a self-hosted blogger, I have to admit I can’t tell you what happened the first time, it has become completed outdone by a hack I suffered a couple of years ago.
Anyone who has been following me for a while may remember it, it was early August 2015 and my whole blog had been infected by malware, to the point where even clicking to the home page started an automatic download.
Thankfully I was alerted to the fact quite quickly by someone and my host was able to take it offline while I wait for it to be cleaned up. However, the clean-up didn’t last long and my blog was quickly back to square one. One thing about the blogger community is they are so diverse in talent and Zoe Corkhill was able to get to the bottom of what was going on, after a lot of digging and many late nights. She really was an angel in disguise, as she even tightened up my security before deciding she had most definitely sorted it.
However, as technology becomes more sophisticated so does our need for security and these days it isn’t just computers and websites that need to make sure they are as secure as can be against those wolves. As The Wolf starring Christian Slater shows, printers are becoming one of the largest security risks in offices, check out the trailer here:
So next time you have a few spare minutes, why not make sure your equipment is as safe as it can be.
Have you ever been hacked?
*This is a collaborative post.
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Interesting blog! I never even considered someone would hack into someones blog! I’m glad you had a good blogger friend to help you vamp up your security 🙂
I would never have thought of my printer as a security risk. Really eye opening.
I think I’m keeping spam well away from my blog for now.
I have been hacked before but thankfully it wasn’t anything serious and easy to sort out. I do need to look at security againx
Thank goodness it wasn’t too bad for you.
I have 2 forms of security but am always shocked how many hacking attempts my blog gets its really scary to think people are trying
It is awful isn’t it, I’ve woken up some times to 100s of tries.
Really interesting to think how connected everything is! You never think about a printer being harmful!
I’ve never been hacked fortunately, but i do have some things in place to help prevent it happening.
I have wordfence installed and it tells me when anyone is trying to hack my blog.
It is so scary how quickly a blog can be hacked!
Luckily *touch wood* I haven’t but I am terrified of it happening – I’d be so stressed!
Oh god this stuff really scares me I’m hoping a complete take over never happens must have been awful when yours was infected by malware but so great that you got all the help you needed!
*touch wood* I’ve never been hacked yet, but I’m always worrying about it happening to my site! I try to make everything as secure as I can though
I have never experienced a hack, touch wood. I can imagine it being so frustrating.
My blog has never been hacked, as far as I know. I can’t imagine that happening. It would make me want to cry.
Geesh! I knew I should be protecting my computer and my blog, but my printer, too? What the heck is this world coming to? Guess there is more work for me to do now to protect my printer from hackers.
This is really interesting, but also really terrifying. It’s scary to think of what people can do if they know how!
I have no idea what hackers get out of doing that to someone else. It all sounds super stressful. Glad you were able to catch it quickly and get it sorted
This is so scary. The idea of a blog being hacked is a terrible thing. These are great things to raise awareness about. Who would have thought your printer could be an access point?
Touch wood my blog hasn’t been hacked before, but it is my biggest nightmare! x
Printers?! I would never have thought I needed to be concerned about a printer. I haven’t been hacked thankfully but I did have google manage to block all access to my blog a few years back. I don’t see why people feel the need to hack you