Apparently my site, as well as 30,000 other WordPress sites, became a victim of some type or malware or virus. For around 24 hours this site, and every other site I hosted on this PowWeb account, was totally shut down.
How this attack happened, I’m not really sure. My host insists it was an FTP attack which would also mean it wasn’t a WordPress vulnerability, so take me off that list of 30,000 sites.
However, my host refuses to tell me how it happened, when it happened, all files/directories affected and how they plan to prevent this from happening in the future. My username and password for my FTP server are secure, I almost never log into my FTP server and have not used any of the notorious leaky FTP clients.
So it’s after several months of downtime induced by high traffic to my site, and this latest hack, that I have decided to once and for all, leave PowWeb for greener pastures. I am currently looking at Media Temple and LiquidWeb as replacement hosts. They both seem to be far superior, if not at least far more expensive.
I am also planning to write an article on how I secure my WordPress sites. Even though this one was apparently hacked, it wasn’t because of the numerous WordPress security holes, it seems it was the holes in my host’s security. Somehow I managed to not be one of the thousands of WordPress blogs hacked this week! So there is an upside huh?