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Mar. 31, 2007 at 10:55pm Eastern by Danny Sullivan
The Matt Cutts Blog Gets Hacked
The Dark SEO Team has had a bit of a beef with Google's Matt Cutts from back in 2005 over URL hijacking. Looks like they've pulled a prank on him today. Matt's blog is down, hacked -- and archives wiped out as well. Matt has posted previously to this about the site being slow (post gone, but you can see his Twitter comment here) and heading offline through Monday, so you might be seeing the screen above for awhile.
FYI, be sure to check out CuttsCon, that I posted about earlier.
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By Danny Sullivan
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See Related Stories In: Google: Employees, Google: Parodies, Search & Society: April Fool's
Reader Comments
You can access the archives if you use Google Reader. That might be our best option for a few days. Hopefully the database was backed up!
April fools!
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March 31, 2007 11:44 PMThat'll teach him not to upgrade his wordpress... I doubt the archives are gone, wordpress hacks are usually browser based, and I still have rss feed reading correctly and his entire archive as well - hmm I'll see if I can save it somehow in case he really did lose it (Although, I seriously doubt it - as mysql is a tougher hack.)
I think the timing is a little bit fishy on this one. First he upgrades to the latest WordPress, and then he's having some flaky issues with the site, but is going to be away from his computer until Monday so can't look at it, and then the site is hacked? I think Matt's just having some fun at our expense. Great joke!
I think this could be an april fools joke.
Concerning updates on Wordpress, it has an autoupdate plugin now, but that's still a potential security hole; what if the update files got hacked? You'd have millions of blogs hacked, sending out zombie trojans or spam.
He even dugg two articles about it :
http://digg.com/rss/mattcutts/index2.xml
Why would he do that without first taking the site down? Brilliant link baiting, matt.
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April 1, 2007 12:49 AMHeres a clearer view of him digging about his own story:
http://simplepie.org/demo/?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fdigg.com%2Frss%2Fmattcutts%2Findex2.xml
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April 1, 2007 12:56 AMCold indeed....
"nous sommes le proprietaire de toi"?
(French for "We are the boss of you")
No way.
April Fool's joke.
He should have put april fool in the supposed names somehow.
Some of these names look like well known SEOers...
monkeyboy = webguerilla?
Random Fish = Rand Fishkin?
Shchoeoe = Schoemoney?
davenator = Dave Naylor?
Dan "the man" = not sure about this. Any well known search people called Dan Danny?
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April 1, 2007 8:32 AMlejackalgris = greywolf
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April 1, 2007 8:35 AMEven if it is an April fools joke, it was posted early, so that would be evil.
Based on other Wordpress security issues recently, it's not something that I consider very funny if it is a joke.
pentazilla = quadszilla (seoblackhat)
Earl+Duke = EarlGrey (syndk8)
boogybonmot = boogybonbon (creator of mygen - i think his name is Levi)
spamhumtress, Zman I believe are the "real" handles of a couple of the SEO Forums Game Show Celebrities
I could figure out the rest but this is teh lame...crappy april fool's to the rest of you zombies..thanks Internet for ruining a subversive holiday.
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April 1, 2007 2:54 PMThere is now a cool "answer" on the DST's website : http://www.darkseoteam.com.
Ha-ha, you fool!
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia"
I admit it, I fell for it... partly because my blog was hacked 3 weeks ago, and THAT was no joke. However they did not wipe my archives. That was a "nice" hacker, which handle I will not mention to not give him credit.
Matt, well done.
They wiped his archives? That is cold. Not cool. My blog was hacked couple of weeks ago by just copying a "Hacked by ..." text message as the index.html in my blog's root, but nothing was deleted, thank God...