Tech

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours

Published

2 months ago

February 12, 2019

A few days ago, I just got to work and typed in my URL on my laptop found out my site was hacked and trust me this was my first reaction

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours

I knew wailing wouldn’t get me anywhere so I decided to get to work anyway at least that’s the only thing I could do.

I tried to log in to my ADMIN panel and guess what, it was inaccessible too.

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours

Chisos …What could actually get worse?

How My Site Was Hacked

Well, a wise man once told me that in any situation you’re stuck in you’re usually not the first to go through it, always turn to Google. So I rushed off to scan Google for solutions and the results I saw made me feel like a boss literally

Besides,

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 1

Hater’s gonna hate but I’m getting my site back. So I followed the instructions I got and voila my blog was loading again.

Wait.. did you think that was all? Lmao, that was just the beginning of the whole hullabaloo or whatever grammarians call it.

So I decided to go and make a post on my blog and while doing that the ugly reality suddenly hit me,

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 2

My database had been corrupted. My images weren’t loading, Plugins were broken and all that. Boy, I was downright frustrated. You know those moments when you feel like you should have done something before it happened and darkness starts creeping in even though it’s day time

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 3

Yeah. I had that feeling right then. I rushed off to my host and asked them if I had any backups available and they’re like

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 4

That was enough to throw me off balance for a few minutes, I was actually mad at them for not having a backup

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 5

Then they dropped the bombshell and I felt like dying

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 6

The backup problem wasn’t from my host, I mistakenly skipped it when installing WordPress. I had no excuse so I had to figure out a way to get my site up and running again. I tried for hours and all efforts proved abortive until towards evening.

I had a crazy thought to just quit the whole thing since my site was hacked but I just said

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 7

Another solution I came up with was actually pretty simple, back up my images and my posts then reinstall my WordPress. So I got Filezilla and connected it to my site and saw I had to download files of up too 2gb.

I’ve been blogging for more than 3 years so I wasn’t really surprised the site was that big, I tried downloading the 2GB file and the network at my location was just messed up. So I had to pause the download to continue the next day

So while texting my friend Soju (He runs SojuOppa.net a K-Drama movie site and My9jaTv.com for HD Iroko Nollywood Movies) he suggested I use a VPS.

Let me clarify what a VPS is like another computer in another country that is connected to very fast internet but you can control it from your own computer here in Nigeria so you’re basically downloading something but not from your data bundle and the downloaded files stay on the virtual computer.

That suggestion was the turning point of everything.

The next day, I started the whole process. Deleted my website and downloaded my images. Created it back and added back the images.

Did that fix it?

How My Site Was Hacked And How I Fixed It After 72 Hours 8

Nope. It failed. My posts refused to show and the whole site was still broken. P.S – I have about 1900 Posts on this website.

I was losing my patience and then I had to take the final decision. If it didn’t work after that. I was done. NaijaTechGuy would be sold off since my site was hacked. Almost 4 years of hard work gone.

So here is exactly what saved me.

I recently moved to WordPress from Blogger this January and I share all my links to twitter immediately after making a post.
I imported my old posts from Blogger
Went to Twitter collected all my links – I did it manually at first. Later I just wrote a Python script to automatically send me all the links.
I viewed the cached version of my site from Google and copy and pasted the content back to the website making sure it matched the same URL or link as the previous posts
After that, my site was back online

Of course It was in a little way my fault my site got hacked, I was so obsessed with making my site fast for users that I even forgot to close the backdoor. I had no security plug-in and I had a lot of plugins running on the site. About 60.

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So that’s basically how my 3 sleepless days went. Well, now I’ve learned my lesson, the hard way. All the same, as they say, experience is sometimes the best teacher.

I’ll drop my pen at this point. I haven’t been posting because I would feel bad without telling you guys exactly how my site was hacked and just move on as nothing happened. Posting would resume as usual soon.

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smartphones

How Multiple Cameras Work On Android And iOS Smartphones

Published

3 weeks ago

April 2, 2019

Michael Ajah

How Multiple Cameras Work On Android And iOS Smartphones 10

How multiple cameras work on smartphones have always been a question on the minds of most people and 2019 is the year of multiple cameras and many if not all smartphone brands have released phones with multiple cameras. You’ve probably seen the Nokia 9 Pureview with 5 cameras and the Huawei P30 Pro that comes with 4 cameras (40MP + 20MP +12MP +TOF Camera) and 50x optical zoom.

Huawei P30 Pro

How Multiple Cameras Work

These two devices come with crazy specifications but I won’t go into that right now, maybe in another post.

However, have you ever tried covering the main camera of your device with a dual camera?

If you haven’t, try doing that right now.

You’ll notice you are actually blocking the whole camera. That leaves the question – What do the secondary cameras do and how do they work.

How Multiple Cameras Work On Android And iOS Smartphones 11

How Multiple Cameras Work

Now I want you to understand this. Most OEMs have other uses of their secondary camera other than the ones I’m going to mention below. These are just the basic functions of the secondary camera.

The secondary camera improves the overall clarity of the image with the help of a “Monochrome” feature. The secondary camera only records the black and white version of the image. With the help of the Monochrome sensor, the primary camera measures how much light is coming from the point of focus.

Previously (with the exception of the Google Pixel 3), the primary camera in smartphones normally handled the measurement so there was a very high possibility of losing some detail while measuring light intensity since it would still need to work on the color filtering.

So this extra burden is handled by the second camera which takes care of that area. Combining the monochrome image which has detailed information about the light and sharpness with the colored image that was captured by the primary camera will produce a rich and detailed image.

In some phones, the secondary camera acts as the zoom lens. Huawei uses their cameras on the P30 Pro a bit differently but going into the entire details might end up making this post a bit lengthy and a bit boring for people who aren’t hardcore techies so I’d try to keep this balanced. However, if you’d like to see that in another post do let me know in the comments.

So that’s basically how multiple cameras work on smartphones

Tech

Google Wifi For UBA – Google Partners with UBA to Provide Free Internet

Published

2 months ago

February 15, 2019

Michael Ajah

Google Free Wifi For UBA Customers is here and it seems we all are going to get faster internet access but like with most things that come from foreign brands, there’s a little limitation.

Google Free Wifi For UBA

Google Free Wifi For UBA – How It Works

Google just partnered with UBA to provide free WiFi across 11 locations in Lagos State, Nigeria.

Google Wifi For UBA

Seriously, Just in Lagos. Google I’m disappointed. Even Facebook did the same thing with their Express WIFI.

According to reliable sources, the Wifi service would be available at 11 locations in Lagos State and is an extension of the Google Station initiative launched at the #GoogleforNigeria event held last year.

However, the good news is that Google said it will roll out the service in 200 locations in five cities across Nigeria before the end of 2019.

Google Station actually started in Lagos last year and extended to Abuja in December in partnership with Backbone Connectivity Network.

This Google-powered initiative would allow customers access to internet connectivity within the 11 branches and its environs, thereby facilitating their day-to-day businesses and activities, while ensuring unhindered connectivity.

I feel this would actually make standing at the ATM queues at the banks less boring.

Google Free WIfi UBA

The 11 branches where the hotspot will be located are: UBA Bank Road, 810-811 Bank Road, Daleko; UBA Matori, 21 Fatai Atere street; UBA Surulere, 152 Ogunlana Drive; UBA Allen, 13 Allen Avenue, Ikeja; UBA Tisco Plaza, Alausa; UBA Apapa, 11-13 Warehouse Road, Apapa; UBA Marina, 55 Marina, Lagos Island; UBA HQ, Broad Street, Marina; UBA Lekki Admiralty; UBA Oke Arin and UBA Aspamda Plaza, Trade Fair.

Google Nigeria’s Country Director, noted that the institutions remained focused on providing internet services to users for free.

She said, “With the help of our partners, we are offering high-quality internet access in heavily-trafficked areas like airports, markets, malls and bus stations throughout the country, especially in areas where there were no internet connections before.

“Even with the amazing progress on expanding mobile internet, we are finding that public Wi-Fi remains a crucial step in getting free, high-quality internet to everyone,” she explained.