Hackers, the malicious idiots who like to cause trouble for folks simply because they can, found a way to take down ChristopherDiArmani.com.  It really doesn’t take much… just inject a link to a site that contains a virus and the King of the Web, Google, does the rest.

As you’ve probably noticed, for the past five days you were greeted with a nasty warning sign from Google that if you visited this site you would be infected. I certainly can’t blame Google for doing that… they’re just trying to keep the web virus-clean.

Here’s the chronology of the attack:

On January 5th I received a notice from Google that my site contained a link to a site that contained malware, or software that might harm someone’s computer if you visited that website.  After digging through the site I found and removed the link, and asked Google to review their findings the next day.

No sooner had I submitted that request than my own anti-virus software began issuing warnings that a virus was rampant on the website.

Now, while one might like to think it’s a malicious conspiracy trying to take down a pro-gun, pro-free speech, pro-Rights and Freedoms voice, I find it hard to put on my tin-foil hat and blame a conspiracy when simple human stupidity provides an adequate answer.

Sure, there may be some truth to the notion that I’m making some headway in the battle for our Rights and Freedoms, but the more likely reality is, I believe, that there are many stupid (albeit talented) people out there who have nothing better to do than cause aggravation for people they don’t even know.

Thankfully, I implemented a daily backup system back when I first started this site, so the WordPress database was safe.  Then it was just a matter of re-creating the software for the entire site from scratch.  It’s not as daunting a task as it sounds… Download a clean copy of WordPress, download clean copies of all the plugins used on the site as well as the WordPress theme used here, and then re-build the site on a new server.

Sounds like a lot but it’s really not.

All the configuration is contained in the WordPress database backup.  Once the clean files are uploaded and secured, it literally only takes a few minutes to import the database and everything is back and running just as though nothing had ever happened.

Of course the constraints of work get in the way, adding to the delay of all this, but that’s life.

The longer delay is getting Google to review the website and remove their “Attack Site!” warning.

As of January 10, 2013, the new virus-free ChristopherDiArmani.com is happily online, along with some new security enhancements that will hopefully prevent this kind of annoyance in the future.

Now that Google has reviewed the site and given me their stamp of approval we can all get back to the business of protecting our Rights and Freedoms!