Naughty Husky � web hosting

Inkrainbow/Pocketbloke Hackers

Björn — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:12:48 +0000

Very recently I have been getting quite a lot of sites hacked by guys who leave an include in files like js and php files. This include calls a script from their own servers located at inkrainbow.ru and pocketbloke.ru.

I’m not entirely sure exactly what the script does, but it seems that they get into the sites via FTP. Which means that my PC must have been infected by a trojan which has been sending them my details. I have so far spoken to another developer and have also seen a comment on another blog post about the same guys, here, which suggest that the trojan targets Filezilla specifically and that way gets all the saved login details to your sites. If you follow that link to Nate Stillers blog you will get some good advice on what to look for.

What I have been doing up until now is just to download all images and template folders, delete the entire installation, then re-upload the images and template folders to the CMS systems. Then I go about changing all the FTP login details as well as the admin login details on the systems themselves.

So far I have had WordPress, Joomla and just plain html sites hacked. I have also downloaded a nifty little application called UnHackMe, which helps with detecting rootkits and trojans which your normal anti-virus won’t pick up.

Hope this helps someone as I have not seen many posts so far about these guys. I you have anything to add, please comment here or on Nate’s Blog post.

*Edit 19 August 2010* Nate developed a script that you can upload to your site and it will scan your entire site for this malicious code, find it here.

Web hosting on our new server

Björn — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:23:08 +0000

I have had a couple of gruelling days moving all my websites over to a new server. It has been nerve wrecking. It felt like the nameservers were never going to resolve. So now that we are happy with the new server, I have also put up some web hosting packages on our site, Black Alsatian.Web hosting is South Africa is relatively expensive still because of the price of bandwidth.
Our new server is quite clever. In the event of a server failure our failover
system will route all traffic to the available server within the cluster
thus keeping your website online and improving reliability.
Additionally, by routing database queries to a database server within
the cluster we can maximize overall performance resulting in faster
response times.
Our servers run a failover application that check
the servers every second. If a failure is detected our application will
automatically initiate the available server to take over all server
services (web, email, mysql, cpanel, etc). Once all server services are
failed over (up to 2 minutes) your website will remain online until the
failed server is fixed.

Have a look at our hosting packages on our site.

Web Designer vs. Desktop Publisher

Björn — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:50:25 +0000

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a web designer. I live in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. My company’s name is Black Alsatian.
Yes this post is in a way to shamelessly punt my own business, but it is also in the hope that someone would read it before getting a web designer to build a website for them.You can just do a search on Google for web designer, and literally millions of results get returned. Yeah working on the web, we all try to get our piece of the pie.
The unfortunate thing is that there are so many of the guys out there, proclaiming themselves as web developers, but in fact they don’t know much more than what they can accomplish in Adobe Dreamweaver^TMor Microsoft Frontpage^TM.

Yes, there is actually a bit more to it than just making the website look pretty. I have been shocked by some of the work I have seen by guys here in PE.

Yes fine, so you have a website, it looks damn nice, but, how about the following:

how long does it take to load (keeping in mind, there ARE still people using dial-up connections)
how long does it take to load between pages
can you find your website on Google (not by typing the domain name, but by searching for your particular product or service)
do you have one of those animated Adobe Flash^TM intro pages?

If you are stuck with any of the above, you need to seriously have a chat with your web designer. It means your site is not doing what it’s supposed to do.

Pages taking long to load, means either the graphics aren’t optimised properly or the coding behind it is not to standard, or both!
Taking long to load between pages, see the above.
Can’t find your site on Google? There are actually companies that specialise in just optimising your site for the search engines. It’s called Search Engine Optimisation. These companies can charge you phenomenal fees, but if your web designer is worth his buck, you shouldn’t have to take this measure.
It is never a good idea to have a Flash^TM intro page. Even though Google now claims to be able to read Flash^TM files, it’s still a fairly new technology. There are ways to optimise it, but it’s still no guarantee.

So, in short, things to look out for, websites for R100 per month or R1000 setup, R200 per month thereafter. These guys normally just take the same template and re-use it over and over. That’s how they manage to do it for so cheap, because they don’t put the time into it.

If you are in the market and unsure, contact me and we can have a chat. I might even convince you to not get a website at the end of the day. I do web design as well as web hosting.
Happy internet marketing!