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How Long Has This Been Going On?
“There were chills up my spine,” the pen of George Gershwin once carefully traced, building up his solemn and sweet oath to that wonderfully wide-eyed question that lingers, lingers, until, in lieu of an answer, a piano trickles away the tension. When I realized at 5:30 eastern this evening that Power Line—one of the largest and probably the most influential Internet-based conservative political commentary outlets—had been hacked, that was the first thing that came to mind: How long had it been going on?
A fool’s computer program was taking each and every Power Line post and inserting the name “Mitt Romney” around each and every letter of each and every word. It started with the most recent posts, and when I caught it the damage had already been done to posts extending as far back as November 2004. As I tried to shut it down, I realized that the hacker was simultaneously changing the passwords to various usernames within Power Line’s content management system—the Internet program that runs the blog. A few (if I may claim some credit) deft moves allowed me to interrupt the password-changing process, wrest control from the hacker, and lock things down. The very lovely and talented Annette, who runs Hosting Matters, pulled the backup from early this morning and got our database restored to an earlier state, while our ever constant readers helped us recover the text of the day’s posts, which were affected by the hack but not covered by the earlier backup.
I estimate the site was defaced for a full three hours, which is hardly acceptable. As John Hinderaker wrote earlier this evening, criminal prosecution is a distinct possibility, presuming we are able to find the perpetrator. But it was also unacceptable for a defacement such as this to tarry so long a while. It is a good lesson: The webmaster should always keep both local and remote backups at all times. Or else he, too, will be crying salty tears.
BY THE BYE: Kristen Chenoweth sings a wonderful version of “How Long Has This Been Going On?” on her debut recital album.
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