Got hacked.
Fought back.
(Or at least figured out how to fix it, anyway!)
Bloggers: If this should happen to you -- that an ad pops up when your blog address is accessed -- it's most likely because one of your gadgets has been infiltrated. I confirmed that this is what happened here when I removed all the gadgets from my sidebar -- and voila! We were back in business. Unfortunately, I can't tell you which gadget is (currently) infected because I couldn't view the blog to see what I was erasing; I was just rolled back right into the stoopid "bloggroll" ad when I tried to figure it out. But, so long as you can get into your Blog dashboard, you should be able to get in and remove all your html goodies -- which should get rid of the problem. If anyone finds out which one is the culprit, I'd love to know, though.
5 comments:
How, oh, how does this work?
I have not added a new widget or gadget to my side bar in ages. Is it a time bomb kind of thing or does the html code get hacked somewhere else and then affect us by default??
How did you remember what your gadgets were so you could replace them?
And how did you know what gadgets to trust (to put back on your sidebar)?
I have started to remove things and then periodically I "view blog" -- still being re-directed.
Aaarrrrhhhgggg!
Peggy,
I'm soo not an expert in these things, but the way I understand it is that whenever
you add a gadget that has a "feed" or moving parts, so to speak, you leave your
blog open to potential attack. If a hacker gets into the code of the gadget, it
gets anyone who has the gadget.
Since I couldn't "see" my blog, either, to see where things were, I figured the
only thing I could do was to get into my sidebar via the dashboard in my
blogsite "front page" and delete anything that had an
html code. So, when I got into the individual "gadgets" boxes on the design page,
I just hit edit button on anything that I had a good idea was not just
text" or image oriented and if it had an html code, I zapped it. Which means I killed
some innocent "victims" -- but I did get the culprit that way.
I really have no idea how to know what's safe to add now, though. And I'm wondering
if I shouldn't just stay away from the fancy gadgets altogether.
One nice thing is that you can't "catch" this virus just by visiting someone who
has it. You get it only if you have a "feed" that's been hacked. :0/
Irritating, isn't it, though???
THNX!!! I found it! It was hiding in the "search gadget" -- the one offered by blogspot.
I never realized how much html code I had/have in those sidebar gadgets.
Thank you, again!
Lisa, what I've been told by others is that it's usually the blogroll on the side bar that does it. Blogroll, meaning a list of blogs that you link to on your side bar. Ever since being warned about it I have not linked to any other blogs in a list like that on the side. Maybe this was the culprit? I don't know. Just a guess.
Yeah -- someone else guessed that, too, Kelly. But I didn't have a blog roll on my sidebar -- I took the one I had off some time ago(It was the Catholic Mothers' one) for a similar reason. And I don't remember having the search gadget... So, I'm stymied. So long as it's gone, though, I'm good.
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