dreamhost took down my site, HELP

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The Dreamhost web hosting thread below was started by Jay Kennedy on 2009-04-09 17:27:25:

Post Reply? My site has been upgraded to the newest version of wordpress, but then was taken down due to a “phishing exploit.” I was given instructions to fix it which involves the site being UP so I can get into wordpress and remove unneeded plugins and update old ones and install recommended phishing detection plugins. How can I fix it if I can’t get access to the site? I have been with dreamhost for several years, faithfully and loyally, even with all the downtime and slowness issues that happen off and on, didn’t matter. They’ve always treated me good, responded immediately and professionally, and have been forward thinking, progressive, and customer-service friendly. I have several sites hosted here, never had a problem. Recommended them to my friends and they all jumped on the bandwagon with me, and we’ve been very happy with our service. For the first time in history I’ve got this feeling of being ignored. I’m helpless. Can’t do anything they suggest I do without the site being enabled. We can’t call them but must “schedule” a phone call to be made within a 3 hour block of time, which means they call you when they can get to it. This is frustrating because I believe this whole situation could be resolved with a simple phone call. Instead , I email support , get a NEW person handling the call who has to learn the whole situation from scratch, offers suggestions, I write back, and ANOTHER new person responds without the knowledge base of the previous support person. This isn’t the dreamhost I know and love. Here is the last email I got over 24 hours ago, with suggestions from JasonC from dreamhost… and I’d happily follow these if I could (but I can’t since the site is down … don’t they realize that?) If I don’t get this resolved within the week, I’ll have no choice but to leave dreamhost. No sense paying for website that I can’t use. What else can I do? Any suggestions? I feel completely helpless, and this has been going on for a week. ——————————————————————– On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 6:52 PM, JasonC of DreamHost <jasonc@dreamhost.com> wrote: Reply from DreamHost (Apr 7th, 2009 - 20:34:30 / #25140589) Hi Jay, So let me see if I can try to straighten you out. My name is Jason and I’m the resident WordPress nerd around these parts. I want to try to help you fix the issues you’re seeing with your WordPress install. From the sound of things, the hacker has left a backdoor in your current install and continues to use it to get in. To start, get rid of any plugins and themes that you don’t use. Well, except for the “default” theme. That needs to be there. Then you need to install fresh copies of the theme and plugins which you do use (i.e. have active) and use the following plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exploit-scanner/ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan/ These should help you tighten up and hopefully clean out your current install. There’s also an article on the WordPress Codex that is full of hints on hardening up your install after you’ve run those plugins: http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress Alternately, if you find that you’re still seeing issues, there’s always the tried and true export and reinstall. If it comes to that, feel free to mail me directly at “jasonc@dreamhost.com” and I’ll do what I can to help walk you thru that. After all, I’m always happy to lend a hand whenever it might be needed. Thanks! Jason Edited by Jay Kennedy on 04/09/09 03:28 PM (server time).

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