Info: communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence
UD said:
It was a simple little exploit.. He wasn't able to delete anything but rather only upload a index.html which defaulted over the index.php .. All is well again and those arent the only site's they've gotten.. If you havent noticed alot of this is pointing to
www.red-hackers.com (A Muslim hacking site?)
They are usually using a common tool called "
Metasploit Framework", which is used by hackers to test exploits on networks (usually their own, learning experience and figuring how to make it safer from the next fellow). Most folks have a misunderstanding of the popular term "hacker" (generally the good guys) versus "crackers" (not your friends), so do your research on the terms, learn the diffrence and you'll understand how this happened. Basically, hackers (remember, good guys who break into test exploits on their own networks or others to learn its vulnerabilities therein (or to teach others the same)), created a system (research "Metasploit Framework" on the net, and you'll find more than you care to read) to aid in this. A few of them posted on hacker message boards how to overwrite the index pages on the servers, and a bunch of think-they-know-something script kiddies got ahold of it and started passing it around. It isn't easy to do, but takes no genious hacker (well, in this case cracker). UD is right, these idiots are doing nothing more than overwriting one file. Those that could do more would kill off the server. This exploit was even pulled-off on the SnapNames.com website late last year, and has been done to Ebay.com, Whitehouse.gov, and many other sites you would think had A+ security. No harm done, but a real embarrasment. Unless you have a dedicated server, there is not much you can do, since protecting against the many ways this can be done takes knowledge way beyond most webmasters (and even beyond these script kiddies following the expoit's formula). Even those on dedicated servers have to be able to code at the OS (operating System) level to be able to stop it totally.
Best advice: If you code server-side (CGI/Perl, PHP, ect.), create a script hidden in a very unlikely place (For example, if you use the most-common cPanel, put it in your "etc" folder below root-directory.), so no nut thinks to look for it if they got in, since this is normally just misc. cPanel system-created stuff. Have this script run on a cron-job to every so often read your index page, and compare it to a "copy" of the index page you have hidden in the same folder as this script. Then, if contents of the two does not match, have script email you (prefferably to an email that you get alerts about on your favorite IM as soon as you log-on). You could even have it over-write (re-create) the index page, with the copy, if it finds it diffrent.
Other than that, you could always get your own server or lease a dedicated one, so that you have full OS control, read and study as many computer languages as you can, learn how the exploits themselves work, then get recreating your server's operating system.
The VERY VAST majority of these "hacked" sites, as UD mentioned, only had the index page overwritten. No reason to panic. The folks who wrote the framework to do it, don't do crap like this (true hackers have ethics and hold each other to them). The script kiddies are doing little more than copy+paste and making less-informed think they are the Real McCoy.
For those that may be interested, in the next 2-3 days (I don't have time today..but it is a priority for me, seeing this post), I will write a "check/verify index-page changes" script like I mentioned above, and post it for download here when I get a chance.