Could Someone Be Tampering With My Blog?

[gotabiz]

I have a blog which I publish on Blogger. I track my stats on statcounter. I was checking them tonight and found something disturbing. I received a referral visit by way of widgetbox and the visitor landed on a page of my blog. From there statcounter indicates that the next url visited was an extension of the landing page only it was the PUBLISH EVET (I put this in caps for emphasis). From there statcounter shows the visitor went to the extension RESIZE IFRAME (this is all from the landing page ie the url is still the landing page). Finally statcounter indicates the individual went to PUBLISH EVENT again. The visit came from Belfast, UK. statcounter says they spent 2 min and 18 secs on my site. Google Analytics (GA) says they came twice and spent 00:01:03 on the site but looked at 23.50 pages.

My site is full of very useful information that is of great value to the public but that many visits in such a short amount of time? What's up with that?

I have no safety features on my blog. I own the domain name that is associted with the blog but I do not know much about internet security. I'm concerned about a site hack. I also have concerns that hackers may attempt to use my site for evil purposes perhaps even turning it into an attack site.

I do not have experience with internet security but I want to protect my site. It has been operational since August 2008 and has been receiving an increasing number of visitors epsecially in the past couple of months (which is welcome) but I am concerned about the bad element trolling it. A little more info to help with an answer from any of you tech guys who might be reading this: I publish much of my own material on the site. I also re-publish the work of other authors if I deem it scientifically accurate and serves the public interest but I only do with the knowledge of the original author, and all re-published material is obtained from article databases such as ezine and isnare. I am the only person who has permission to publish or use the dashboard.

Based on the info I was able to provide at the top of this post, is it possible that I'm being hacked? What can I do to protect my site? I am a novice at this so I'm not familiar with a lot of the security lingo or know how.

Thanks

[nickoran]

I dont know about adding security to blogger, but definitly make sure you have everything backed up if everything went down for some reason or got changed you would want to put it all back very quickly!

[rooed]

I would bring this up in the Blogger forum too. You may be on the front line of a new security threat that needs to be addressed.

[seopo]

Sounds like you've your content framed within their site.

<frameset cols="25%,75%">
<frame src="MYheader.htm">
<frame src="http://www.yourdomain.com">
</frameset>

Easiest way off the top of my head to prevent this is to use javascripts and target tag.

You can use javascript to reload your domain to the top over the parent if loaded within a frame and then add target="parent" to reduce the impact on those that don't have javascript available.

This should be sufficient to get rid of any spoofers.

[Dinghus]

#1 is to make sure all your passwords and usernames are hacker unfriendly. Make them long and complicated and change them often.

Next, check your logs to see if anybody else has done the exact same thing.

Check with blogger to see if they know what it could be all about.

Since you are using 3rd party software, it is hard to really secure it. That is up to the 3rd party. Best you can do is change things up so you are not like the rest of the blogger users. Not sure what exactly you can do. Maybe change default folders?

[DesignsOnline]

Sounds to me like a blog scraper bot, they find blogs with related content and scrape (copy) the data and auto post on the blog they are sent by.

Fairly common these days.

e-Commerce Websites | Ecommerce & Shopping Cart websites

[gotabiz]

Originally Posted by DesignsOnline

Sounds to me like a blog scraper bot, they find blogs with related content and scrape (copy) the data and auto post on the blog they are sent by.

Fairly common these days.

e-Commerce Websites | Ecommerce & Shopping Cart websites

I have Copyscape installed on my blog but I've never used it. Perhaps I should use that to find out if a scraper bot has been trolling my site?

[SnerdeyWebs]

Scan your computer for virus's and then change your password on the blog. Make the password complicated. Like K@10p!jD