If you tried to reach one of the FOA or EAD sites this week, and got some funny looking code on your screen, it is because of a security problem with our hosting service. The problem allowed outsiders to replace the site address in the database with an outside address which tried to load bad stuff onto your machine. This problem affected sites running WordPress blog software and the problem is being plugged by the hosting service.

This reinforces the need for everyone, especially anyone running Windows operating systems, to install anti-viral software. This is a well-known “malware” tool, called “BUZUS”, and it should be recognized by your protection software.

If you happen to be running a WordPress site and you see a mixture of lines of code and parts of your site showing up, you need to use phpAdmin or the equivalent in your site management tools to replace the “siteURL” field in the “wp_options” table in your database with the proper link. If you don’t know how to do this, you can reload a backup of your database from before the attack and you will only lose any posts between the backup and the attack. If you don’t have backups of your site and your database, you need to have a backup plan.

Ain’t computing fun?

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