Being Hacked… Grrrrrrrr!

And why was I looking for a way to mount my FTP site local to my PC? (See previous Geek Software of the Week post)? Well, my web sites got hacked. Yes… I was the victim of a hacker. And, what do I think about it? Well, I suggested, in the midst of the two days of recovery in the process, that the hacker should be shot by a firing squad, but denied a blindfold, just so he’d see it coming! Oh yeah… I was… shall we say, “miffed!” Dewd. I had a nice, quiet Sunday all planned… but, NO! It was not to be! ALL my sites were referring people to a page that said, “Your PC is infected, click here to get cleaned.” Which, of course, if they did click, it really DID then infect them. Arrrrrghhh! By the way, you wouldn’t be stupid enough to actually click through, would you? Didn’t think so.

But, thanks to a friend and co-worker, who has asked to remain anonymous… and who is a super-amazing script guru in Linux (as well as other scripting methodologies) we were able to clean my sites, and purge the evil from my system! Hallelujah! Good triumphs over evil! And, make no mistake, EVIL is what it is. I am perplexed that such people exist. And, I firmly wish that they did not. (If you get my meaning.) However, let this be a warning to you… Do the necessary security steps to stay safe… or it will be you whimpering in the corner! Sigh!

Geek Software of the Week: NetDrive!

NetDrive
Wow. Again…. wow! This one rocks! Every so often I run across a free (for personal use) program that just changes the paradigm… this one does! (For me anyway!) It allows you to set up your FTP connection to be a local drive letter on your system. Now, at first that doesn;t sound so interesting… but this makes it look like it is truly local, file attributes, dates, file size amounts, etc., etc. Dewd! Imagine using a “local” PC backup program to back up your FTP site! Oh yeah!

Check this one out fer sure!

NetDrive – the Network Drive for Windows

“With NetDrive, managing your remote FTP and WebDAV servers will be as easy as any old file folders on your PC. Once you mount the local drive, you don’t need to run an application or an FTP client interface but a simple drag-and-drop in your Windows Explorer will be sufficient to transfer and manage files.”