Sunday, June 1, 2008

June 1

Well it's been a few weeks since I typed out a blog. I've been busy with two separate clients. Each of these clients had some type of "emergency"

The first client host their website at another service provider. I simply write code and put it on their server. I am not paid to administrate this server as they pay their host for that service. About 2 weeks ago their website was hacked and the hacker comprised the data that was on the server. So this client could not function and their business was dead in the water!

The hacker inserted some malicious code into the database, so when the records were displayed it would make a call to another server and try to execute some Java-script code. Of course, this caused the application to fail as he inserted this code everywhere!

I had to restore the database back to the previous state. This is a Process. I have to restore a back up. Then I have to to see what transaction took place between the last back up and the attack to make sure that no data was lost. The first time I did this process it took me about 4 - 5 hours.

Of course, once I restored the data the site was hacked again with in hours so I had to do it again! All and All I had to restore the data 5 times and in the end I had the process down to about 2 hours!

After, that I recommended that the server be moved behind a firewall! At the time of the hacking the server was on a DMZ with no security what so ever! EVERY PORT WAS OPENED!

I also recommended a a reinstall of the OS to remove any of the hackers programs that might still be installed somewhere on that server!

I had to spend my Saturday restoring that servers data and setting up their application on a new server.

Total Time was 22 hours for everything. Of course, at the same time I have 6 other projects that I am trying to work on as well!

Then, I had another customer who had a bit of a minor emergency. I really can't go into details about this one. So to make a long story short I had to write a "coupon" application and a back end manager to check out the coupon activity.

This took me about 20 more hours to complete.

So with the extra 40 hours of unexpected work I had no time to work on my normal projects. So I've been spending my time catching up on my work load so that I can get everything back to normal. It's been two weeks and I'm still not caught up!


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