Warmest Greetings,

:: Monday, April 14, 2003 ::

I knew that eventually the skinny character with long legs in the Cre8pc logo whose head is turned back looking over his shoulder while running forward would come to have some meaning someday.

It means, "Cover Your Assets". Last Friday afternoon the server which hosts Cre8asiteForums was hacked into. They managed to deface nearly every hosted site. By some bit of luck I happened to be in the forum, left it, returned immediately because I forgot something and WHAMMO!, the whole forum was defaced with a huge image which is the hacker's calling card. I immediately called our host and they fixed the forum, but the fate of the other websites who were HTML-based was not as favorable. Everything had to be moved to a new server while the hacked server was repaired. That meant that for about 24 hours all the websites, and the forum too, was down.

I've learned that hackers take great pride in their "work" and some websites will show off their handiwork, glorifying them further. I learned that if I want to pursue the group who attacked, it would cost a minimum of $10,000 and rarely are they caught and prosecuted, so the feeling is "Why bother?"

So, cover your butt. Make backups of everything. Change passwords often. Rotate IP addresses. Make sure directories are protected, your software is up to date on all patches and that your host has up to date server software as well. Hackers will exploit every known bug just to let you know you haven't protected yourself. They feel it's their right to do so and to make their point very clear (that they consider you an idiot), they'll deface your site, or worse.

I just finished writing part 3 of my article series which is running in Jill Whalen's Advisor newsletter. It covers gathering information about your website users before, during and after the website build. Seems I'm not the only one trying to get across this message...>>> Paper Prototyping: Getting User Data Before You Code. You can read what I have to say in this Wednesday's Advisor

Bored? Need inspiration? Wondering what to try next in web design? See the latest winners at the trendy FavoriteWebSiteAwards.com

Have you seen Jennifer Lopez's new video for "I'm Glad"? It's a recreation of the movie "Flashdance", only Lopez plays the Jennifer Beals part. Ok, so Lopez has on the wrong shoes in the dance test scene, but they got most everything else right. I should know. I wanted to be a dancer and watched that movie 347 times.

That's a wrap.

:: posted by Kim Krause Berg on 4/14/2003 01:43:46 PM

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