Revival Blog

This is going to be a bit of a techy post but if you blog it is an important one.

A few months ago I had someone from Russia hack a site targeted to Christian youth. They used an exploit in the website to takeover my site and plaster every page with the most horrible hardcore gay pornography and slurs against Christians. I am not sure how long the site had been like that before I found it.

I have around 30 websites give or take. On them, I have a half dozen or so Wordpress installs. Between those installs I have a gaggle of plugins. In the past I was not that diligent about updating every WordPress install and plugin. I have repented of that and you should also.

Hackers are always looking for a hole to exploit on your server and they have found plenty of them on mine. In the past year hackers have hijacked my server to relay emails all over the world for a variety of products. I am confident that I personally would not endorse any of them. When I finally found the root of the problem, my server was relaying over 30,000 emails a day. What gave the hackers access? An outdated mail script.

Last month I found that someone had installed an irc bot on my server. This caused a nightmare for me. The culprit? An outdated upload script.

Wordpress is constantly updating the script because they are constantly finding holes. But if you are not updating your installs, and updating them the proper way, you are setting yourself up for problems.

The new version of Wordpress 2.5 goes a long way toward helping you keep updated.  Now when a plugin has an update available, you can click a link, add some info, and it will update itself.

Really a great benefit.

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I found this on Dave Fergeson’s blog. I don’t know dave and have no idea how he got in my feedreader but here is a story titled A Victim Treats His Mugger Right. The best way to enjoy this story is to go to NPR and click on “listen now” so you can hear Julio Diaz for yourself. Or you can just read it below:

This is Julio Diaz, a 31-year-old social worker who ended his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner. But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn. He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says. As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.” The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome. “You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says. Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth. “The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’” “No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’” Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?” “Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said. Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says. The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to. When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.” The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.” Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.” Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.” “I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

I know that since I am an evangelical Christian I should have been hoping that Diaz was a member of the NRA and had a handgun to shoot the young man but I like the end of the story the way it is.  It almost sounds like old school Christianity.  You know . . . the kind that Jesus talked about?

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