Grep hack of Network Solutions takes NJN Network and other sites offline

Google redirect from hacked sites

(Update – this story was lost and restored) Sunday our site, along with hundreds of other WordPress sites hosted by GoDaddy and Network Solutions was hacked by the “grep” virus. The hack re-directed users without virus protection on their computers to sites that attempted to infect them. Widespread hacks like this one prove the value of keeping your virus protection up to date.

At 5 AM Sunday the site was clean. At 8:30 AM, we found the hack and immediately took NJN Network offline. The site was cleaned by Sunday night. Google continued to give notice that the page was hacked until Monday afternoon until their experts had verified it. 

The story got widespread attention from ComputerWorld and others. One security expert tracked the hack back to one ISP in Los Angeles.

NJN Network is being watched around the clock for any re-infections since this is the second time in 2 weeks the hackers took over these accounts.

According to experts, the hackers set-up rogue accounts inside Network Solutions and GoDaddy from which they can attack other websites on the same server or group of servers.

NJN Network is clean. We are not publishing more than one story a day this week to allow the security people to monitor all changes. We apologize and hope to be back in full swing by the weekend.

The plague of virus attacks is spreading which is cold comfort when our site goes down. Google has been attacked. Newspapers are attacked. The US Government sites have been hacked. Slate, which is owned by the Washington Post, sent out a polite notice last night that they had gone off-line. It can happen to anyone, which is again cold comfort.

Again we apologize for any inconvenience.