Getting Bigger Means Getting Hacked…

So over the last couple days, I’ve been dealing with restoring LaptopLifestyle, Futurelooks, and this Blog. Apparently, some script kiddies (aka Hackers) got into our Apache server and wreaked some havoc, altering our index and login files. Wayne was awesome in getting us going again, and Ewdi helped out with Futurelooks, getting our CMS back online (Thanks Guys!).

In order to ensure that Futurelooks remains up 100% of the time, I dropped some serious coin on another server that will house only Futurelooks and will be taking special steps to ensure that it is locked down tight. Since Futurelooks is my bread and butter, it gets what it needs to survive. $3000 later, and I’m an owner of a new DELL 1850 Dual XEON Server with a couple of SCSI drives. This should give a huge performance boost to Futurelooks and give it much needed stability and security.

In the meantime, I’ve patched everything up and made backups of everything. I was maybe 80% ready for this attack. Next time, I plan to be 100%. All in all, it was a good wake up call, and if I’m serious about my business, I should have solid equipment and a solid backup plan. Let this be a lesson for other web entrepreneurs to never cheap out on these two things.