Wordpress plus Dreamhost = hacked Wordpress blog

I host my main blog on Dreamhost, using Wordpress. This may have been a fatal mistake.

A while ago, someone emailed me to kindly point out that my site had somehow been hacked, and spam links injected into my HTML code. It wouldn’t appear on the site to human eyes, but it’s all there in the HTML code and picked up by Google et. al.

I changed all my passwords (Dreamhost, Wordpress, FTP), removed the hacked code and thought the problem was over.

Oh no. It’s just come back. Only this time, I can’t figure out where the code is. And since I changed all the passwords to begin with, it means that either Dreamhost or Wordpress has become seriously compromised. Although naturally my Google-fu is failing me and I can’t figure out where the problem’s come from. Although this post gives one indication.

Now I’m debating whether to carry on with this blog or move to yet another blogging platform like LiveJournal or something… bah… Or I could give up. It’s been six years, after all…

Originally published at almost witty. You can comment here or there.

I saw that Hugh Laurie & James May down the US embassy queue...

Reported via UK gossip rag Holy Moly - needless to say, take it with a grain of salt...

Went to the US embassy the other day to get my I-Visa. Get in the queue only to see James May appear behind me. Security woman checks his papers - tells him his photos are the wrong size so off he goes quite happily to get new ones. In the meantime Hugh Laurie turns up behind me. I look around only to see Dr House with his wife and someone I'm guessing is his agent. Then he has the cheek to moan about what 'a nuisance' it is to hang around with these people, and why should he have to queue up like everyone else? Queue arrogant agent going up to security woman and saying the classic 'don't you know who this is?'.

Next thing you know the Prince Regent has been whisked to the front with a flunkey and is straight in the visa building leaving the rest of us to shiver in the cold. By now James May is back and I'm thoroughly expecting 'don't you know who I am?' behaviour from him - but nothing. No, he waits his turn like the rest of us.

Meanwhile, when I finally get inside, Laurie is being accompanied about by some Yankee lackey who apologises for the wait (what blinkin wait?) offers him coffee, guides him to the finger print machine - apologises for the indignity of it all... so much for Hugh Laurie being a man of the people!