Watch Your Security!

Some of you may not know about David Dairey who had his domain stolen from him for a while until finally resolving a few days later. This was not a lack of security on the blog, but rather on the user's computer. There was no way that the hacker was able to steal or as most of you know it "hack" GoDaddy's Registry to take over the domain. Some ways that this could have happended is:

1. The user fell for a phishing page, which is a page that looks exactly as a real page but it isn't. An example is when you go to a page that is suppose to redirect you to PayPal.com but redirects you to PayPai.com. Notice that a capital "i" will make it look like PayPaI.com. Then after you go onto the page it will ask you for your email and password as usual but instead of sending you to your account, you would most likely receive an error after you've just sent your account details to the wrong hands (hacker in other words).
2. A keylogger on your computer has been dropped by downloading an infected file or was dropped via Exploit. A keylogger can do the worst of damage because what it does is it captures all your keystrokes throughout your whole session on the computer, every account, every password, every letter will be recorded down into a text file then sent to the hacker who created the keylogger. This will give them access to your accounts without using bruteforce or any other technique.
3. An exploit could have been on a visited website that could have dropped a security risk on your computer. Exploits tend to take over a vulnerability in software. Since GMAIL had some bugs, it was used against its own users. Now that the problem is fixed for GMAIL (long time ago), there is still bugs not known and that could be taken over by Exploits.

1. Updating your wordpress CMS which is the most simplest way but many users wait until it is released for auto update on Cpanel, Hsphere, or any other panel they use, which gives the bad guys time to come up with exploits or use MYSQL hacks to get into your admin panel, then you're in big trouble!
2. Setting permissions to 644 on files in your FTP. Some common ones are the wp-******.php files in your root directory. Index.php is important as well because if someone gets access to it, they can ruin your front page. Some bloggers get screwed over because of their hosting or because someone (could be them) left it to 755 or 777.

These are some of the simpest ways for anyone to follow to prevent getting your blog stolen or even hacked. If you are using Joomla, Drupal, or any other CMS for blogging, there are several ways to protect that as well (but that's another post another time). Overall, Be safe, Surf Safe, and remember that security is important because security these days are getting tighter and tighter due to the fact that new exploits and viruses are being distributed, don't get hit by one!

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