I have a little website that I update (very) occasionally, and when I went to it today, it’s gone! Just a white page with the words “Cracked by Falcon! C äíåì ïðîãðàììåðà!”
What does this mean?
Someone has found a security flaw and used it to replace the content of your site with their own content(files). Your hosting provider needs to deal with the security issue.
You need to re-upload your site’s content.
I’m sure someone will be along in a minute with a detailed answer. Until then, I’d say that some smart ass has invaded your Web site through a security hole, possibly corrupted or stolen files from the site and left a stupid message to mock you and your site users. The fact that you’re asking this question tells me you probably don’t know too much about Web sites and servers, security, etc. Is there a techie who looks after the server on which your site is actually located? Ask them what to do.
(Beaten to the punch!)
I don’t believe in the death penalty, even for murderers; why do I want to see “Falcon” in the electric chair? It’s a visceral reaction.
Be aware that the page that’s replaced your site MAY have a viral, trojan or similar load on it.
I’d FTP into the site and see what else might be lurking there in your webspace - it might be being used to store kiddie porn or anything.
Thanks everyone.
You’re right of course! I fully admit that I am absolutely clueless. I’ll go to my web host people and ask them about it.
Thanks a lot!
Oh, and
Yeah, it really is annoying, right? I can’t imagine having the kind of free time you need to randomly mess with other people’s stupid websites.
Who does your hosting?
To others:
Is this really the fault of the hosting service?
Is there any reason to be concerned about this happening if I’m hosted by a big company like godaddy?
Yeah, it happened to us last year. Some guys claiming to be from Turkey kept it up for a few weeks. We eventually found the security hole and told our host (a very large corporate system) and they closed it. Man, what a pain in the butt.
Absolutely, because you control the permissions for each directory in your site. I had my site hacked by someone who redirected traffic to their link farm. It was most likely done by a bot that went out looking for security vulnerabilities, and it found one at my site. (I opened read/write permission for the root directory when I was debugging a php script, and I never reset them.)
Take care of this quickly. A friend of mine was questioned by the police and the FBI because his web server began conducting DoS attacks on computers owned by some country’s embassy in the US (New Zealand?). Anyway, he was on vacation at the time of the attacks – in yet another country (Argentina?) – and was able to demonstrate via the server logs that it wasn’t him. Nonetheless, “having a web page” plus “vacations in other countries” was only a panda-bear-hair away from “1337 international HAXX0R” in the mind of these cops. If you’re not tech-savvy enough to know what’s going on, you could be in for a rough couple of days should your space be used illegally.
Thanks. I’ll get on it as soon as I can.