Gargravarr
Our resident snake charmer
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2020
- Location
- lutruwita
Just got this email from Shane...
Hey friends. Yesterday was a crazy day at Blackland. We got hacked in a wild and kind of funny way. Here's what happened.
TL;DR: Our front-end user interface (the part you see) was taken down by a rogue engineer terrorist to blackmail his boss into paying a ransom (for real). No customer data, payment info, or anything important was compromised - just the visual parts of our site. It's mostly back up and normal now.
Story time
We contracted a company six months ago to help speed up our website. They needed access to our theme (the front-end visual stuff) to clean up some code and get things speedy. It worked great and everyone was happy so we all moved on with our lives and forgot about it.
Yesterday morning was a normal day. My wife and I are expecting our first kid tomorrow so I spent the morning at home - kind of working, mostly counting contractions and fetching water. Until an automated email popped up from one of the apps we use:
"We're happy to report that everything has transferred over to your new theme."
Wait. What new theme?
In a mild panic I go to our website and... it's gone. I mean, there's technically a website there, but all the photos, buttons, copy, layout, logos, videos, EVERYTHING. Gone. All that's left is some basic, empty theme template. Weird, but no big deal. The theme probably broke for some reason so I go into our backend to install one of the older versions that we save as backups. But none of it is there anymore. All versions are gone. Baffling. Mild panic becomes full panic as the reality of our business vanishing into thin air starts to set in. What the hell happened?
For the next hour or so I call and email everyone I know to see if they just so happened to trip and accidentally wipe out our entire website. Shopify doesn't know anything. Nobody knows anything. It took weeks to build our site last time and we can't afford to have no website for that long. Plus, what a pain.
Then I get another email and it all becomes clear. It's Terrorists.
"Hey Shane Swartzlander,
I am reporting to you one thing about [redacted] who has worked with. I have worked with him before and he hasn't paid me for my work so far.
Unfortunately, I have removed your current live theme due to the guy. I have a backup theme, so don't worry about it.
Please contact him to pay me ASAP.
I know this is unprofessional, but I should live too, Hope you understand.
<3
Terrorist"
"Hey, [redacted] didn't pay me yet.
If he doesn't pay, I can't give it to you.
But If you pay me $2000, I can send. It will be much better to pay me $2000 rather than rebuilding everything by spending much money.
XoXo Terrorist"
Oh hell no. We do not negotiate with terrorists. Plus, I've gotten into a rhythm and I'm making some decent progress. You have no leverage over me, Terrorist. I consider telling him off and draft a brave expletive-filled email, but then I get a little scared and decide not to send it.
Things get less interesting from here. I stay up all night making the website functional and it's finally almost back to normal. Sales start to come back and I feel better.
There's still some work left to do to tidy up the odds and ends, but things are functional once more. If you spot anything out of the ordinary, please let us know. We'll keep working on this over the coming days to fix all the little things. Oh the joys of entrepreneurship.
Thanks for reading. I'm off to fetch my wife some water.
-Shane
Hey friends. Yesterday was a crazy day at Blackland. We got hacked in a wild and kind of funny way. Here's what happened.
TL;DR: Our front-end user interface (the part you see) was taken down by a rogue engineer terrorist to blackmail his boss into paying a ransom (for real). No customer data, payment info, or anything important was compromised - just the visual parts of our site. It's mostly back up and normal now.
Story time
We contracted a company six months ago to help speed up our website. They needed access to our theme (the front-end visual stuff) to clean up some code and get things speedy. It worked great and everyone was happy so we all moved on with our lives and forgot about it.
Yesterday morning was a normal day. My wife and I are expecting our first kid tomorrow so I spent the morning at home - kind of working, mostly counting contractions and fetching water. Until an automated email popped up from one of the apps we use:
"We're happy to report that everything has transferred over to your new theme."
Wait. What new theme?
In a mild panic I go to our website and... it's gone. I mean, there's technically a website there, but all the photos, buttons, copy, layout, logos, videos, EVERYTHING. Gone. All that's left is some basic, empty theme template. Weird, but no big deal. The theme probably broke for some reason so I go into our backend to install one of the older versions that we save as backups. But none of it is there anymore. All versions are gone. Baffling. Mild panic becomes full panic as the reality of our business vanishing into thin air starts to set in. What the hell happened?
For the next hour or so I call and email everyone I know to see if they just so happened to trip and accidentally wipe out our entire website. Shopify doesn't know anything. Nobody knows anything. It took weeks to build our site last time and we can't afford to have no website for that long. Plus, what a pain.
Then I get another email and it all becomes clear. It's Terrorists.
"Hey Shane Swartzlander,
I am reporting to you one thing about [redacted] who has worked with. I have worked with him before and he hasn't paid me for my work so far.
Unfortunately, I have removed your current live theme due to the guy. I have a backup theme, so don't worry about it.
Please contact him to pay me ASAP.
I know this is unprofessional, but I should live too, Hope you understand.
<3
Terrorist"
Then I start piecing it all together. The theme access I granted all those months ago! Yep, never removed those permissions. Shit.
So I email the service we hired. That kind of frantic "hey we're dying over here and it's your fault" email that you hate to send. No response. Are they in on it? Is this all a conspiracy by Big Razor? I always knew they were jealous of the Blackbird.
I email Terrorist and tell him "I will find you and I will kill you". Not really, but I wish. I actually tell him that it would be super cool if he could just not be a terrorist since I can't control his employment dispute. He says "no".
After some pouting about how the world is unfair, I put on my big boy pants and start building again. What choice do we have? I start scrounging to gather whatever remnants Terrorist hadn't taken and try to get our website somewhat functional. You have to get your own water today, Pregnant Wife. I've got a website to build.
Thankfully I was able to at least get something together within a few hours. Nothing beautiful or functional. Nothing that actually would make any sales, but at least we had a homepage.
I keep sending frantic emails hoping that somebody will help. They don't.
Eventually, Terrorist's boss emails me. Turns out, he's a good guy who's also having a really bad day because Terrorist is targeting a lot of other websites. So it's not Big Razor - at least not this time. It's just a rogue developer causing chaos. But the boss can't help me either. I apologize for my dramatic email and he apologizes for allowing Terrorist to ruin everything.
I go back to building the site and cancel my appearance at Tuesday Trivia Night. My team does better without me, go figure. Then Terrorist reaches out again.
So I email the service we hired. That kind of frantic "hey we're dying over here and it's your fault" email that you hate to send. No response. Are they in on it? Is this all a conspiracy by Big Razor? I always knew they were jealous of the Blackbird.
I email Terrorist and tell him "I will find you and I will kill you". Not really, but I wish. I actually tell him that it would be super cool if he could just not be a terrorist since I can't control his employment dispute. He says "no".
After some pouting about how the world is unfair, I put on my big boy pants and start building again. What choice do we have? I start scrounging to gather whatever remnants Terrorist hadn't taken and try to get our website somewhat functional. You have to get your own water today, Pregnant Wife. I've got a website to build.
Thankfully I was able to at least get something together within a few hours. Nothing beautiful or functional. Nothing that actually would make any sales, but at least we had a homepage.
I keep sending frantic emails hoping that somebody will help. They don't.
Eventually, Terrorist's boss emails me. Turns out, he's a good guy who's also having a really bad day because Terrorist is targeting a lot of other websites. So it's not Big Razor - at least not this time. It's just a rogue developer causing chaos. But the boss can't help me either. I apologize for my dramatic email and he apologizes for allowing Terrorist to ruin everything.
I go back to building the site and cancel my appearance at Tuesday Trivia Night. My team does better without me, go figure. Then Terrorist reaches out again.
"Hey, [redacted] didn't pay me yet.
If he doesn't pay, I can't give it to you.
But If you pay me $2000, I can send. It will be much better to pay me $2000 rather than rebuilding everything by spending much money.
XoXo Terrorist"
Oh hell no. We do not negotiate with terrorists. Plus, I've gotten into a rhythm and I'm making some decent progress. You have no leverage over me, Terrorist. I consider telling him off and draft a brave expletive-filled email, but then I get a little scared and decide not to send it.
Things get less interesting from here. I stay up all night making the website functional and it's finally almost back to normal. Sales start to come back and I feel better.
There's still some work left to do to tidy up the odds and ends, but things are functional once more. If you spot anything out of the ordinary, please let us know. We'll keep working on this over the coming days to fix all the little things. Oh the joys of entrepreneurship.
Thanks for reading. I'm off to fetch my wife some water.
-Shane
