Last week this blog was hacked, not once but twice. While writing my previous post, I noticed that everything was very, very slow, yet everything else on my computer was fine. When I went to look at the blog itself, it redirected to a Russian female body builder site. Interestingly enough, though the url was clear, I got a 404 error, so they couldn’t even redirect properly. I ran the Exploit Scanner and found that I had been hacked by the Base64 hack. I cleaned it out and then did many of the things you are meant to do to harden and secure WordPress. The next day it was back. I am on Dreamhost and many users, particularly newbies, blamed Dreamhost. However, it is fairly clear that Dreamhost is not to blame. The terms of service make it clear that it is your responsibility as site administrator to watch out for hacks and the like. Most (though not all) of the sites affected were WordPress sites but it is also clear that WordPress was not to blame as WordPress itself is free of security leaks. It seems also clear that the problem lies with plug-ins, themes and other user uploads. It is this that I cleared out, removing all themes that I was not using as well as several of the plug-ins and other junk. Since then, though I check daily, I have had no problems. So if you go to someone’s blog or WordPress site and you are directed to a Russian porn site, they have been hacked and you should let them know. If you run a WordPress site, check, troubleshoot, where necessary, repair and harden.