Can someone have crashed my website?

  • Thread starter Thread starter > Adrian
  • Start date Start date
A

> Adrian

Suddenly my website is one hell of a mess.
I would presume that the style sheets were
blown. Is that a thing that could happen maliciously?
Does anyone have that kind of experience?
Or must I recon with some chance event in which
I myself had no hand at all? My website runs
at a host with an excellent reputation.

Adrian.
 
Adrian,

Have you been able to identify exactly which files have changed and the
differences? Do you have your files source controlled on your end?

You cannot know anything malicious has happened until you can identify
a change which intentionally caused the site to break. Something like
"this website owned by [hacker name here]" would show up on your pages
or at least be noted in the files on the server.

It could be possible that a file just became corrupted or an upload by
someone placed files in the wrong location which caused the unwanted
result. If it was just human error, consider scripting your deployment
process. Look into MSBuild to do that. If you do have Remote Desktop
access to the server I suggest uploading all of your files at a zip
file and unpacking it in place to ensure you have all of the files you
needed.

I wrote this series on MSBuild which may help you out.

http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/2006/11/30/7-steps-to-msbuild/

Brennan Stehling
http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
ASP.NET JAD (Just Another Developer)
 
Hi Brennan,

Thank you for your response. The website is
important commercially, because of the contact
page. It is the only way clients can correspond
with the helpdesk etc. So I uploaded all the
source files immediately when I saw the site
had crashed. The site is up and running again.
No, there was no hacker message. In my
opinion the style sheets were buggered up.

Adrian.



Brennan Stehling said:
Adrian,

Have you been able to identify exactly which files have changed and the
differences? Do you have your files source controlled on your end?

You cannot know anything malicious has happened until you can identify
a change which intentionally caused the site to break. Something like
"this website owned by [hacker name here]" would show up on your pages
or at least be noted in the files on the server.

It could be possible that a file just became corrupted or an upload by
someone placed files in the wrong location which caused the unwanted
result. If it was just human error, consider scripting your deployment
process. Look into MSBuild to do that. If you do have Remote Desktop
access to the server I suggest uploading all of your files at a zip
file and unpacking it in place to ensure you have all of the files you
needed.

I wrote this series on MSBuild which may help you out.

http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/2006/11/30/7-steps-to-msbuild/

Brennan Stehling
http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
ASP.NET JAD (Just Another Developer)
Adrian < wrote:
Suddenly my website is one hell of a mess.
I would presume that the style sheets were
blown. Is that a thing that could happen maliciously?
Does anyone have that kind of experience?
Or must I recon with some chance event in which
I myself had no hand at all? My website runs
at a host with an excellent reputation.

Adrian.
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