access to wordpress site

[rwitchey]

Hi,
I am unable to access my sonic-hosted Word Press site. When I type in the address, I get a page that says Forbidden, etc. When I called Sonic support, I was told that there was a php problem, which has now been patched. However, they told me I need to back up my site, then delete it, then reinstall Wordpress and the backup copy. I have no idea how to do this. Could someone please walk me through it?
Ruth W.

[kgc]

Ruth, you've already received an email directly but just to explain what happened here in brief for others. A cluster of wordpress sites were exploited and being used to send spam today. We misidentified about 40 installations and disabled access to the sites. Yours was one of these and is currently back up an running.

I'm sorry that the information provided wasn't clearer or more prompt, our entire systems group was in a training seminar at has been working to clean this up after hours.

[saccsf]

I was also informed that my site was compromised and that I had to save the website/database, reinstall WordPress, and restore the website/database. After several attempts to reinstall and restore, I'm getting informed that my site was incorrectly flagged. So now I'm reverting the website back to its original state before the problem occurred and the site is not working 100%. Now I have to contact the website developer and ask for assistance. I'm extremely angry that this needless exercise has costed me over six hours of time taken away from another emergency assignment with an important deadline that I have to tend to.

[jspirit]

I am in the same situation, however a Sonic senior technician erased my site without my authorization-and the technician on the phone walked me through importing the website- as I had exported the site recently- However hundreds of files and photos did not reload- so the website is still compromised.

Yesterday I called an independent technician who estimated it would cost $500-$1000 to restore and scrub the website- and now I am told there was nothing wrong with the site in the first place. I have a 3 pm appt with the independent technician.

Can Sonic fix this problem or should I send you the bill for fixing it, due to the unauthorized erasure of the website?
Sandi

[dane]

Can Sonic fix this problem or should I send you the bill for fixing it, due to the unauthorized erasure of the website?
Sandi

Please do dialog with our team about assistance from us before you retain outside assistance - we can't reimburse you for expenses from an independent contractor.

[jspirit]

Dane, I have called several times since this problem began yesterday. I was told the website was compromised. I was told Sonic could not help me. Then your senior technician erased the website. Then we tried to upload a back up and only some of the site was restored. Why has Sonic not fixed this problem today?

A timely response to correcting the problem would be appropriate.

I have had to retain an independent programmer since Sonic has not taken action to restore it. She, Kate Schneider, Zack Darling and Creative Assoc. has talked with your tech support and the ticket is 2050931. How much longer will this take? Kate says that you need to correct this before the time stamp changes tonight. Can I count on this happening?

Sandi

[jspirit]

Dane,

Thank you to whomever has restored access to photos and files on the website. I am grateful this has mostly been resolved.

Sandi

[Guest]

In the web hosting I feel there is a bit of neglect in terms of support. I am the maintainer of the website here at dmi and I started have issues with the web hosting about 3 months ago. I was doing an update of Wordpress theme to make it more secure and it wasn’t compatible on Sonic hosting. I was working with support and doing everything I could to update the theme but because they don’t maintain the hosting there wasn’t much they could do. They told me to post on the support forums as they are looked at by the sysadmins frequently. I did that in early March and received no response. I found that if I tried the theme on the my personal hostgator account it worked perfectly. I called support to let them look at the PHP settings on my hosting and compare to sonic hosting to see if there was something different to no avail. Fast forward to Tuesday, I am working far away and need something hosted on our website and then I see it is “Forbidden.” It’s not until we inquire about it ourselves that we get any information about how our site has been shut down due to malicious code. I am frustrated about the lack of support and communication here. It’s forced me to move our website elsewhere. After moving the site our updated theme has worked perfectly with no modifications to the code. In doing this I have wasted about 5 hours in transferring everything. I did scans and had scans run by our new host and they returned nothing I am sad to do this as I believe in the morals behind sonic and really like supporting local businesses. With sonic web hosting being the same prices as large web hosts but without communication and support I can’t use sonic.

Sandi, I reassured to hear that you are having the same frustrations I am having.

[jspirit]

This is a copy of a survey note to Sonic:

On Wed, May 30, I was unable to access my website, www.emfsafetynetwork.org. I called Sonic and was told the website had been hacked. I spoke to at least three different tech support people that day. The first person said I should post a note on Sonic forums. The third person I spoke with, Ry actually tried to help, which I appreciated. However when he asked his senior technician about erasing the site in order to rebuild it, the senior technician erased the website, without my authorization. Ry then walked me through the process of starting a new site and importing the back up xml file that I had saved. However many files and photos and plugins would not upload. Ry was unable to help me further.

I then retained an independent computer programmer, Kate Schneider of Zack Darling Creative Associates to restore the website. She was available at 3 pm on Thursday.

On Wednesday evening I received a confirmation by email that the website had been "compromised".

After 10 pm on Wednesday evening I received another email from Sonic that the website was not compromised and that the website was restored. However it was not restored.

On June 1, the website was finally put back to the original condition, thanks to Kate Schneider's help and a Sonic technician Kevan who restored it.

Although Sonic has apologized for the problem, and offered one month's free hosting- this event cost us $380 for Kate's help, and lots of hours of my own time.

I understand that mistakes happen. What I am disturbed about is the Sonic senior technician who erased the site without my authorization, and the fact that I was told several times the site was hacked, when it was not. I would like to know the full story of what happened.

I would like Sonic to split the cost of restoring the site ($190) due to the Senior technician's erasing the site. One month's free service, plus a one year no cost upgrade from personal hosting to value hosting would be an acceptable solution. A version of this solution was already offered to me so I hope you will agree to this resolution.

Sandi ([email protected])