CMS Made Simple Forums

Hi there

My wife's website was hacked because she set her password as 'password'

http://biancaduval.com

Is it possible to rescue this site or, is it beyond hope?
We cannot login with her details as, the password has been changed.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Ben

move the current cms to a subdir
install a new cms but
choose a safe password of at least 16 characters >> http://www.strongpasswordgenerator.com
make sure you choose the same table prefix as for the old site
do not create the database
copy uploads from the old site to the new

It appears that the hacker didn't mess too much with the site, and didn't try to get access to the files so, before a drastic measure, I would just reset the password on the db 1st to recover access to the back end and than assess the extent of the damages.
The way to do it depends on the version of your CMSMS installation... a recent procedure is described here, but you may have to search the forum for a similar procedure for older versions. As I said depends on how old your installation is and what upgrades have been made since 1st install.
On the other hand, your host may have backups of both files and DB, so that could be even easier, just replace all from a recent backup.
Just a word of caution: no matter what procedure you choose, make sure you backup everything before, just in case.

By the look of the /admin login screen it is an old version - pre 1.9?

Yes I would approach host first to restore. Then quickly change admin passwords to something considerably more secure.

Then you ought to be upgrading really:
http://docs.cmsmadesimple.org/upgrading

To save further repair work on other systems, I'd also be asking my wife what other logins she has set to "password" and change them quick.

Good luck

I would never trust a compromised website myself (unless I'd have a recent checksum file of the cms).

So I'd choose for 1.) backup, 2.) reinstall

After that, I'd go for a non default admin directory http://docs.cmsmadesimple.org/general-i ... ring-cmsms and of course a hard to guess password AND username. Make sure that username is not displayed in e.g. News/blog items etc.

Thanks for all your help guys. I think i have enough now to go on.

Ben