Also unique to this attack is the fact that it seems to only be targeting blogs hosted on MediaTemple servers. The popular hosting company published a page on the issue on Tuesday, and have since updated it stating that all malicious content has been removed.

However, some bloggers have still found some rogue files, and it can’t hurt to check your self-hosted WordPress blog, just to make sure you’re clean.

According to ThemeLab’s blog post, MediaTemple’s page and a forum post from our friends at WPTavern, here’s what we know at this point:

1. Affected servers will often have PHP files with random names (examples given in the MediaTemple post include xkehy.php and xfami.php) in the document root (the HTML directory). These files can be removed with no detriment to your blog. Some say that some files designed to look like WordPress core files could be hiding in various folders as well.
2. Altered pages are only visible to spiders used by search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
3. If people visit the links themselves from other (non search engine) IP addresses, they are redirected to a CNN RSS Feed.
4. If you click through to any URLs from a search engine, you are sent to a malware site.

If you have any further information about this WordPress hack, please post a comment below or join the discussion in the WordCast Forums.

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Akismet in GoDaddy's Hosting Connection

Because it comes included as a plugin in a standard distribution of WordPress.org, it makes sense that the vast majority of WordPress bloggers (and even bloggers on other platforms) use Akismet to protect their sites from the constantly growing enemy of comment spam. With a WordPress.com API key, Akismet hooks into the vast database of blogs on WordPress.com, constantly learning what is and what is not comment spam.

While the standard WordPress API keys used to activate the service are free, Akismet has long requested that blogs taking in over $500 a month of revenue pay $5 a month for a Pro Blogger API key, or, for even larger sites, choose one of the more expensive and full-featured options. Not only are these users helping keep Akismet operating and clearing the net of spam, they receive benefits such as:

• Higher priority and faster service
• Removal of traffic limits and throttling
• Priority service update notification

Automattic announced today that Pro Blogger licenses are now available via GoDaddy.com’s Hosting Connection panel, where GoDaddy customers can easily purchase, if applicable, and install different web applications for their sites. Due to many users hosting their websites on GoDaddy, the Automattic team has decided to make the process of installing commercial versions of Akismet on GoDaddy sites even easier.

GoDaddy.com users can find commercial keys for Akismet available in their Hosting Connection panels starting today.

Trivia: Did you know that the Akismet name is a contraction of Automattic (the parent company of WordPress.com hosted blogs, Akismet, and other blogging and social media related services) and Kismet (defined as the “magnetic attractive force that actualizes the playing out of karma; often used in the positive sense”).

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• Blogger Rolling Out Automatic Pagination
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Topics and links from this week’s show:

• Kym’s design idea
• Widget Tutorial
• Options Theme
• Plugin of the Week: Akismet – Spam protection bundled with WP
• CuteFTP
• SmartFTP

Download this week’s podcast

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