OTSG Hacked

Posted

The other day I mentioned an inexplicable plummet of OTSGs PageRank and a subsequent drop in traffic and search engine clout.  After a short investigation it appears the OTSG was hacked.

The hackers somehow broke into my .htaccess file and forwarded all bots to some goofy site using this bit of code:

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Googlebot|Slurp|msnbot)
RewriteRule ^ http://bablo.me.uk/ [R=301,L]

They are somehow affiliated with the two spamy sites that come up #1 and #2 when you Google “Old Ten Speed Gallery“.  Anyway, I’ve solved the immediate issue and it appears to be under control.  You may, from time to time, see irregularities in the site.  I am working to correct these issues.

Thanks to unmaskparasites.com and this article for helping me find this.

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  • http://www.UnmaskParasites.com Denis

    Hi,

    Thanks for sharing the .htaccess exploit details. I’ll add them to my blog post.

    You should report spam results to Google.
    http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

    • http://oldtenspeedgallery.com The Ten-Speed Dreamer

      Have reported the issue to google. Thanks for a great tool.

  • Nima

    Hi,

    Thank you for sharing this. I have been hit with the same problem (htaccess hack) and have fixed the problem. However, I am wondering how long did it take for you to have your search results get back to normal, and how long did it take for the page rank to be back to what it was before the hack.

    Was there any permanent damage that this did to your search results and/or traffic?

    Thank you for your time!

    Nima

  • http://oldtenspeedgallery.com The Ten-Speed Dreamer

    Hi Nima,

    I would say it may depend on how long your site was infected. My hack was left undetected for about 2 weeks. I noticed an increase in SE traffic almost immediately, and the page rank returned to normal after about 2 weeks. Hope you are as fortunate!

    Good Luck,

    Cameron

  • Henons Coperpe

    Hi, this happen with me too. Could you please contact me by e-mail for more datails? I would like to share with you informations about what happen with me.

    Thanks!

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