By Gabriel Princewill-
Godaddy battled hackers attempting to disrupt the Eye Of Media.Com for four days, after what appeared to have been malicious hackers attempted to invade this online site.
The Eye Of Media.Com was subjected to a fierce attack, said by godaddy to have been one of the worst they had ever seen. The hacking attempt started about two weeks ago, but our own technicians and developers tried to work at it, as it was within their sphere of expertise, at least theoretically. Sustained attempts to redress the ugly state of affairs proved futile, calling for superior expert interventions
Plans to report on the situation on this site as matters were unfolding were shelved after advice was given too avoid that until the nightmare had been resolved. It was suggested that reporting on the hacking before a resolution was found, could please the hackers, and inadvertently encourage them to double their efforts if they were made aware of steps undertaken taking to fend off their malicious activities.
A number of suspects were immediately listed internally, including some organisations that have taken exception to some of our investigations still ongoing, and a few highly placed individuals in certain professional spheres we have investigated and exposed in the past, and some we are still investigating. Despite inconclusive evidence that physical entities were responsible for the hacking, godaddy representatives expressed alarm at the level of malware found on the site, given their formidable firewall security designed to secure all online sites that hire their service.
”No form of security is always hundred percent safe”, one godaddy consultant told me. More especially where there may be multiple forces attempting to hack an organisation using sophisticated means, some hackers may prevail to a degree but a high alert will always enable us to react accordingly in those unusual circumstances and address the problem effectively”. He added : ”we will always be able to adapt to the most sophisticated level of hacking as they develop”
DISINTEGRATED
Numerous components of The Eye Of Media.Com’s site became disintegrated, following the infestation of malware believed to have been deliberately planted to obstruct our operations on the site. All our social media features disappeared from the site for over a week, and the configuration on the right hand corner of the site where our hot news, radio link, and popular section are normally placed, also began to malfunction.
The radio button was the first to disappear and be stripped, with the popular section at the bottom, going with it, preventing it from playing for a while on the site, though it continued playing via google. Representatives from GoDaddy, at first asked us to disable all the plug ins and re-activate them, as part of an elimination process to identify whether a corrupt plug- in may have been responsible for the overall malfunctioning of the site.
All efforts to restore the site were to no avail. At one stage, technicians working on the problem were logged out of the site whilst trying to restore its overall functionality. Eventually, Godaddy’s hardworking team spent close to 24 hours battling the malware, eventually clearing it from the site. However, shortly after the malware was removed, the hackers appeared to find a back door back into the site, penetrating the generally secure firewall and security on the site.
Extra layers of security had to be purchased to create an impenetrable defense against outside attack ,as godaddy experts cleared the malware from the site. Petar from godaddy, who declined to give his surname, as is customary with many organisations, was very helpful, continuously emailing and checking the progress of their efforts.
He told the Eye Of Media.Com:
”There was so much malware on the site, it looks deliberate, there is a concentrated amount of malware on here, but it could also be robots. I have never seen so much malware on a site. There are always a few hackers working obsessively to steal information from certain websites to use for their own purposes. Some just want to cause chaos, and ofcourse some will be malicious”.
Petar pointed out that GoDaddy’s firewall provides strong security that makes it very difficult to penetrate. He said there are hackers who try and stay one step ahead of the system, adding : ”we are always updating the intensity of our security”.
Go daddy’s expert premiere service were then brought on stream to rectify the problem. They gave an official time framework of 72 hours for the problem to be solved, and eventually completed the task in about the 56th hour. A number of calls to go daddy before the completion of the task revealed differing levels of knowledge about the expected time frame of completion, raising questions as to why some of their consultants were unaware of the standard process and time frame officially professed for rhis kind of task.
Heading the team was Nikola, who worked diligently and painstakingly to correct all the damage done to the site. All the components were back to their proper positions.Go Daddy subsequently explained the process of expert touch used to normalize the site. It is back to business as usual.
Nikola from the premium service team restored back up versions of the site going back a month to get an accurate picture of what the site should look like, then used her expert knowledge to turn different plug ins on and off, and make a range of changes to eradicate the barriers to the site’s normal functionality. The site has been functioning normally since then , and we thank godaddy for their support and eventual success in addressing the issue efficiently.