PERSONAL

0

1,539

Compromised (EDITED)

6 years ago1,049 words

I thought my site had been hacked due to some issues, but it turns out those issues are likely less malicious than I dreaded. Still, things like that provoke a lot of anxiety.

I'd just written a post about how exhausted I was and how incapable I was of doing the things I wanted to do, and came here to post it... but couldn't access the site. Instead, attempts to view any of my sites resulted in the instant download of a small, strange, typeless file instead, which I was reluctant to even open because I assumed it was something malicious. Someone emailed me to say that they could view the 'server-side code' via these downloaded files, and I was losing what's left of my mind about the idea of someone having access to years' worth of my files, being tortured by these terrible scenarios about what I'd even do if I lost ownership of all my online places somehow...

See, I've owned the domain fighunter.com since I was like 16, but it was registered with some other webhost than all the other domains I own. I've been meaning to sort that out for ages, get it transferred, but last time I tried I was told I needed to log in to my old account on the original registrar, which was old and clunky and, well, there were issues and it just didn't work. So I said to myself "I'll sort this out some other time, ugh". And I added it to my long To Do List... but then ended up having brain surgery, which got in the way just a little bit.

The domain was close to its expiry date though, and the way these things work is that if you don't hold onto the ownership of a domain, anyone else can acquire it instantly as soon as it becomes available. The idea of it reaching that point and me losing ownership of it lingered at the back of my mind for ages. What would I even do if I did lose it? All my other sites are tied to it, and people have memories of it, and of it being my place online. I don't exactly use it anymore, but I still wouldn't want to lose it.

I got an email from my host about a day ago telling me that payment for the domain had occurred and it'd been automatically renewed for another year, which came as a bit of a relief. "I'll check that out in detail later", I thought, then forgot about it. Hours later, though, I came to post here, and the site was down, it was downloading those strange files instead, and I connected the two and panicked that maybe the domain had gone back into availability, someone had snatched it up, and they were somehow able to access all my files and do whatever they liked with it. I almost had a panic attack. Almost.

I talked to customer support for literally hours... but I think the whole thing was just a ridiculous exercise in delusional overreaction. I mean, it's not like I got into a tizz about the lizard people stealing my dreams, or something completely outlandish; there is precedent for disturbed people to try and hack into my sites. Lots of past crises that were genuine. I thought maybe someone might have visited fighunter, seen it was available, and immediately claimed it for themselves. It didn't seem completely ridiculous, especially if someone was embittered about how I've yet to make MARDEK IV, since some people don't like that that hasn't happened.

BUT even if they had gained access to the domain name, it's not like they would have had access to my files. That's not how it works.

Still, in the moment, I felt terrified of that outcome... Now I'm up hours after I meant to sleep, feeling shaken and awful and ugh, frustrated that I even have to worry about something like this at all, especially with everything else I have to worry about at the moment...

As it turns out, the strange file being downloaded was a copy of what you'd get if you used View Source on a page, so it's not the 'server-side code' at all. I've no idea why that was happening, but it doesn't seem to have been as big a deal as I dreaded it was. I've also managed to transfer fighunter.com to my webhost, so I definitely do have ownership of that now. I mean, it seems I never lost it, but now I can rest easy knowing it's not being held onto by some ancient registrar I've long since left. It's snugly in my list of... eight domains that I apparently own (including this one) on my webhost's control panel thing.

There are a bunch of PHP errors in the code though, talking about deprecated (or soon-to-be deprecated) features, which makes sense because the code is really old and I really need to update it... but I don't get why that suddenly started happening like this, since I didn't touch the code or update the PHP version at all. Also, my host tried to change the PHP version for my domains when I was talking to support, but couldn't due to an error... so that's a concern too. I'll need to fix these issues tomorrow, but if you read this before I do that, then you might see error messages at the top of pages, broken inline things, etc.

I suppose if nothing else this'll push me to tend to my sites, like Alora Fane.com etc, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway, especially if I'll be releasing something again soon. I never meant to neglect them for as long as I did, but I suppose now I'm getting back on this games developer path, I should revive them in some form. I've been wanting to talk about that in more detail actually, what exactly to do with them (could I cope with running a community, considering past experiences?), but maybe that's something I'll have to write about when I'm less frazzled.

I'll also post the other thing I wrote and was ready to be posted, then I'll go to bed... Ugh, what a mess.