If your blog gets hacked, who do you point the finger at as the culprit for this pain?
Yesterday we wrote up about how if your WordPress blog was not running version 2.8.4 that you needed to upgrade immediately to patch a security hole that was being exploited by hackers in all older versions of the software. While most people headed the warning and did the upgrade, unless they had already done so as 2.8.4 had been out for a little while, there were still some holdouts who did not heed the warning.
Robert Scoble, a well-known blogger and video host, was one of those people who not only failed to upgrade, but decided to blame every one but himself for the hackers getting in. In a blog post entitled “I don’t feel safe with WordPress, hackers broke in and took things“, Mr. Scoble admits that he had not updated his blog since one of the minor updates to version 2.7, and also admitted he had not backed up his blog data, so he lost two months worth of posts that the hackers deleted it.
Mr. Scoble goes on about how he no longer feels safe using his WordPress blog, but he will soldier on, but he feels violated like when his childhood home was broken in to.
I don’t normally use this site as a soap box, but this time I feel I must:
As you can see from the above image, WordPress makes it very obvious every time the software requires upgrading. While upgrading used to be a pain in the backside, the system is now fully automated and all you must due is click one button to have your software updated inside of just a few minutes. There is really no excuse any more to have not updated, and especially if you hadn’t done since 2.7.x. Notifications go out just about everywhere when it is a serious security fix, so those people who claim they didn’t know they needed to do it are also full of BS.
The rule here is always upgrade your blog and keep a backup on hand, and if you fail to do those things, then don’t cast disparaging remarks towards the software for not doing its job when you were the one who chose not to update.
Robert Scoble
September 7th, 2009 at 1:23 pm #
It is not accurate to say I didn’t blame myself. I blamed myself all over the place. By the way I have talked with people who have been hacked even with all patches loaded. After all, those patches get released because someone got hacked and an exploit is on the loose. What do you say to them?
cori
September 7th, 2009 at 7:59 pm #
Certainly compromised blog owners have no one else to blame – one of my blogs was hacked and I had to jump through some restore hoops to get it back up, but I'm definitely responsible for that.
That said, the dashboard notification is only a partial solution – plenty of people (perhaps including Scoble) only ever interface with their blog using an external tool, and so never see the dashboard….