Today is going to be the second day of slowness.  I'm still running everything on smokin' in the image server.

I suspect I'll be bringing the entire system down today for a good chunk of time. Some little script kiddie hacked into my database / file server by exploiting the horrendously insecure program known as awstats.  They didn't get very far, but they somehow managed to bring down Photographica's primary webserver, Ansel, in the process.  I haven't gone down to the colo facility yet to see what is up, but as it stands, Ansel is deader then a doornail and isn't even on the network.

By the way, don't assume the kid took down the server because he was smart or malicious.  Almost every time I've had a server broken into, things stop working because the dude is incompetent and screws up.  In fact, often it isn't even a real person who breaks in but a script running on another compromised computer that scans the Internet looking for insecure software.  I could go on about script kiddies and their doings, but I've got a server to rebuild!

Note: No personal information or photography was stolen, viewed or even discovered.  For future reference, in most cases the only information personal information stored is your nickname and the email address you used to sign up.  If you become a subscriber or buy a t-shirt, I then store your contact information (name, phone, address) as well.  I do not keep any credit card information on the system.  In the future however, I may store the last four digits of the credit card number for accounting purposes.  Worst case, if somebody broke in to the sytem in the future and stole everything, all they'd get would be any content here and possibly your billing address.  Again, in this case the database wasn't discovered at all (they usually dont care about that stuff anyway).

.... Wish me luck with the rebuild!