Well maybe it was a good thing. I always thought that we were so small that we could slip under the radar. Last week we learned different. We made the big leagues. Many of our websites were hacked.
If yours was one of the hacked sites, you probably saw a white page with some incomprehensible language about scripts and parsing and such. What we understand is that some mischievious individuals have learned to exploit a server feature to allow nasty scripts (programming) to enter undeserving websites on a server (computer hosting websites).
What sorts of websites were affected? Websites with content management systems, photo galleries, blogs, forums or message boards, and chat rooms. In short, just about everyone who has more than the most basic of basic websites.
Our hosting company has assured us that they are implementing changes to prevent this kind of attack in the future and we believe that we have restored all of the affected sites to working order. Since this entailed, in some instances, reinstalling from backups, you may notice some minor changes. If you do, please let us know and we will try to correct the issue.
So what does it mean to play in the big leagues? It means that we are actively participating in user groups and forums to keep abreast of the latest security issues and their correction. We also strive to keep every site up with the latest, best software versions. And, of course, we do backups. A lot of them.