In just 3 days, tektinkers.com got hacked and I watched as it slowly dissolved page by page. My identity was stolen, accounts frozen just after cutting myself off from several communities from a bad decision made. Backs have been turned to me and significant individuals that were there to inspire me have moved on. An emotional bomb epically detonated.
This doesn’t change the established direction, it’s a humble reminder of how I got comfortable and stopped routine maintenance on simple procedures like, backups, monitoring new user registrations, security and network activity. This is my fault and yet and opportunity to learn and make the next version better.
This is the first post of this version of TekTinkers.com. A “posts.csv” was exported out of the database just as the pages became unavailable one by one. With over 21k rows of excel spreadsheet to comb through, thousands of cells to copy/paste into a text doc to re-create as many prior posts made on previous versions of tektinkers.com, it’s Christmas Eve and I only have a few free days left.
DoorDash came bearing gifts of sugar free Monsters to fuel the determination to recreate something better. Yesterday, I built the site on Azure and this morning it was already under attack again with another alert from my bank. This afternoon, a full network rebuild was performed, multiple firewalls installed and/or setup between each asset of the network to limit as much access as possible. Plugins are being better researched before use to make sure they don’t conflict and additional software security has been established.
Co-Pilot has been my best friend in this. Having so many questions about databases, webservers, it seems that now Co-Pilot just knows what websites I’m referring to based on the issues asked about. 10 years ago, it was not uncommon for me to spend a month on one issue. Searching through google feverishly trying to find the answer or a few options to work toward the right answer. There were nights I would go to bed with lines of Linux floating through my mind till another option was revealed to try. If Co-Pilot existed then, I might still have brown hair today. (The header image is incorrect, I have white hair now.)
Break time is over now, time to put on the Fortnite fireplace on the TV. Maybe Santa will show up in my living room to deliver a gift, There is a Java Monster waiting for him if he does.