I’d blogged previously about the hack that occurred on my site. Frustrating since I’d not blogged for over a year and everything went fine for three weeks when BAM, I couldn’t do anything. All the research I had done suggested that this particular hack wasn’t new and would have been fixed long ago (I had sporadically updated the WordPress installation, but hadn’t been too religious about it).
I’ve since found a little more information here and here. The second link has more links at the bottom of it for further research.
The long and short of the situation is another lesson as to why we need to keep our software updated. There really isn’t any excuse to not keep free software updated since there won’t be any out of pocket costs for the software itself. If your hosting provider makes the upgrade easy (and Dreamhost makes it easy for me), then excuses keep getting fewer.
The same is true for any software you have running on your computer. From the operating system to your web browser, Flash plugin, Java, productivity software, etc. Let’s not forget our anti-malware software, either. It’s ertainly important enough to get its own mention.
Since I’m now blogging a lot more frequently than I had been, I will notice when my WordPress installation needs to be updated and act on it accordingly. The upgrades are painless for me since I don’t monkey with the code. Once done, I’ll then download the entire blog site to maintain a local backup in the event some other crazy hack floats around. Uploading from a backup is easier than fixing a problem once it’s occurred.