Developing Usable Experiences

A breach of security, a lesson learned

October 11th, 2006 11:04 pm —  118 views

I received a call today from the hosting company where I lease this server. They informed me that my server was identified as hosting the target of a phishing site and that access had been locked down until I could resolve the issue. They were nice about it, but serious as a heart attack.

Naturally I was a little freaked out. After thanking them for how they were handling the situation, I ran home and turned off Apache until I could sort things out. After some investigation (that bled into SI 501 lecture…sorry Professor Olson) I was able to locate the problem. Apparently a vunerability in a Coppermine Photo Gallery application that I was hosting for some friends had been exploited and a php page with images had been uploaded as a ‘photo’.

This has been resolved and a lesson learned. I need to be more particular about what I host or my service provider will drop me like a hot potato.

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One Response to “A breach of security, a lesson learned”

  1. Dawn on October 16th, 2006 9:24 am

    So it’s fixed, that’s good. I haven’t read your blogs because the titles were the same and I figured they were all the same post! :) I can’t study for 504 because I DON’T WANT TO. So I am employing a proven procrastinator’s tool..wandering around on the computer. Known to waste thousands of minutes! Maybe more!

    Happy anniversary a little late. I went to one scrapbook thing as a favor to a friend. Did three pages. Got bored. Probably won’t do anything with those three pages. Was sort of fun at the beginning, but after awhile ….not. Of course reading this week’s 504 article is not interesting either.

    Back to work.

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