Hackers

[coemgen]

My friend runs a small poetry site that has been hacked 4 times in the last month, why do people hack websites and is there anything she can do to stop them?

[moonacre]

Broadly speaking there are 2 types of hackers: those people who enjoy the technical challenge and those people who enjoy being unpleasant. The former tend to not have malicious intent the latter are just inadequate and are on a level with people who think scratching their names on train windows or trashing a park flowerbed is good fun. You can't stop the really clever ones - but they're pretty rare. All the rest can be stopped by implementing standard (and latest) security fixes, highly secure passwords etc. Who hosts your friends site?

[coemgen]

They just seem to hack the forum section which is run by snitz

[moonacre]

Snitz is an ASP based bulletin board system. I don't think they host - just supply the software. Who looks after the hardware (server) that this software sits on? The server administrator is responsible for setting up security. The other thing is to ensure that the latest version of Snitz (v3.4) is used. It has improved security over previous versions.

[lisaj]

Do they do so from the same IP addresses? Do you even have records of IP addresses used to access your website and web server? If so, just block them, or ask your ISP to block them.

[coemgen]

I'm afraid my friend is like me and not very knowledgeable when it comes to webhosting etc. She says her webmaster is Vision ICT ltd. The hackers are from all over the world, and by all different people. My friend does not have anything to do with that side of the website, she is an administrator and pays the webmaster to sort out this type of problem, from your replies it would appear she is not being given value for money regarding service. Thank you everyone for all your help.