GoDaddy Blogger First I need to admit this. I am really sorry for making this blog unavailable throughout the week. But give me some time to explain what went wrong with this blog. I took the whole blog down mainly due to the security concerns. Yes, due to some problems with the host of this blog i.e. GoDadddy, some security flaws were discovered and I didn’t want to disappoint my readers and visitors by redirecting them to some spam site. So basically, everything I did was to protect my blog and readers.

I didn’t expect Godaddy could be this bad host. I always recommend Godaddy for buying domains but I won’t recommend it for Hosting purposes. Some months ago when I moved from Blogger to WordPress, I choose Godaddy as a host for my blog especially for ease. It’s not that I didn’t experience any other problems before this. I frequently experienced the “Error establishing Database connection” error. But it kept going on anyway because I used to receive a limited traffic.
Now this security flaw was really weird. Most Self hosted wordpress sites including this that were hosted with GOdaddy (and with some other hosting companied too); were hacked, in fact injected with some malicious code. This blog after being infected was being redirected to some other sites. So i took the site down and tweeted:

#GOdaddy is just good for domains, not for hosting purposes. For Some security issues, I have let my site down. Will restore it soon.
And also started looking if some other had problems. And I discovered a lot of tweets regarding the issue.

Soon GoDaddy started responding to the issue and found tweets such as;

RT @danielscocco: RT @WPSecurityLock: Go Daddy Investigates WordPress Attacks and
Reaches Out to Customers http://bit.ly/bw3QGD #WordPress #GoDaddy

GoDaddy has also replied to comments, created support articles and made a special “Security Issue” form on their website. They’ve actively emailed and/or called their customers that may have been affected. (If you’re site has been compromised and you have not heard from Go Daddy yet, please be sure to contact their Security Team.) Via WP Security Lock
GoDaddy has been providing us with statements to keep our readers informed.

WordPress Exploit Update 5/13/2010
“Early into our investigation, Go Daddy noticed a majority of exploited websites were all running WordPress. After feedback from customers, more attacks and more in-depth analysis, we modified our statement to specify the attacks targeted numerous PHP-based applications, which included WordPress.
Transparency is a core value at Go Daddy. We intend to continue our commitment to communications. There are times, however, when publicly revealing too much, such as specific code from the attack, helps the criminals causing the issue.
We are aggressively collecting data to see how the attack is maturing and to discover ways we can help prevent our customers from being impacted and shut down ‘the bad guys’ altogether. Go Daddy is leading an ongoing effort, working with industry security experts and other top hosting providers.
As part of our investigation, Go Daddy is encouraging customer input about their related website issues, which is why we set up a special form: http://www.GoDaddy.com/securityissue.
Look for further updates from Go Daddy on this topic, at http://Community.GoDaddy.com/support.
– Todd Redfoot
Go Daddy Chief Information Security Officer

Besides all these, the WordPress exploit became more frustrating to me. As my database was infected, in hurry what I did was deleted the database and moreover so frustrated that I cancelled the particular hosting account with the Godaddy.
And then I contacted the Godaddy if they could help with anything. But they just sent me a mail with the expenses I need to cover in order to do so. See the mail below.
Go Daddy Mail
So instead of paying their charges, I decided I would do everything from the scratch myself. Well, it took some time but the good news is, we are Back and like never before.

Published by Pradeep Singh

Pradeep is your host at BloggerUser helping you to build your blog by providing Blogger tips, tutorials, guides, free blogger templates and more.

2 Comments

  1. I also was hacked, but I decided to leave Godaddy altogether. Too many problems…

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