There's always something happening.
Maybe this could have been a social media post and it almost was, but opted to write a slightly longer story here and leave it up on my blog instead of a facebook page.
Today was a unique experience that led me to a "We're not in Kansas anymore" type of feeling. Which in itself, as a kid watching Wizard of Oz, was a feeling I thought relegated to older generations - and maybe thats partly the case now. Within four minutes today, my website had over 900 form submissions within a span of four minutes. The internet isn't like it used to be - I've had my first domain nearly twenty years now, and own a lot more today, this was a first. And it was weird to me - purposeless action. Who am I? Some random photographer who works in a small town.
I get some of these junk form submissions - one offs - my read on them is poorly trained bots looking for any form to submit data to, after crawling the website unsupervised for hours or days, because they often come to me with advertisements. Like I'm susceptible to advertising delivered in bad form submissions somehow, another purposeless action, but hackers be hackin I guess.
The form submissions today would have been done with the intent of bringing my site down, or something specific to me personally.
Who could care about me personally and my opinions on running a small website for my business though?
hmmm... thinks a while... not that long actually...
Could it be in any way related to the domain registrar's sales rep who called me about 40 minutes prior, trying to sell me new domain and hosting securities, for a nominal fee of hundreds per year no less? Or was it just great timing on everyone's part?
Luckily, I was already working at my computer and saw them come in. While I've experienced different types of 'hacks' 'outside intervention into the operation' of my website before, this one was new. I did feel lucky to be made aware of it while at home, instead of while camping in Algonquin Park for instance (as it had happened a year or two ago) and discovered myself instead of lets say a new client telling me via text message.
The form submissions on my website are currently non-operational while I work on preventing this sort of access in the future as a result of my response. My reaction involved a few steps, first I immediately changed the file permissions on any html pages with form access - they became private to me only so they'll show as 404s to someone who had them bookmarked now for instance. Secondly, in the case this individual had access to the file that was responsible for receiving form requests and pushing directly to it without my site form html file, I changed the names on those so the paths would be broken.
So... thats my story. Now I genuinely wonder - was someone on the other end of that watching it, and seeing me react, or was it more like a 'set it and forget it' for them - add my website to the DDoS list and run the script, come back to check the damage after a coffee break?
Takeaway? Be on the look out for weaponized sales people over the phone might be it!? haha. In actuality, Be prepared to respond to issues in your online spaces with more speed and efficiency than you've ever had to use before. The internet isn't like it used to be...
While I'm Here...
I've been away from updates across my web spaces for a bit. While I feel that website and social media spaces is a way of maintaining certain aspects of a business, and important for that reason - I have been building out more of the behind the scenes aspects of my business - allowing the online areas to take a backset.
Some of the work going on behind the scenes involves programming, new features - options and offerings for my business, starting up parallel and adjacent business opportunities, some solid AI / Machine Learning development (we're not talking just 'prompt engineering' here), and of course some good ol' fashioned enjoying time off! I made a trip to Banff earlier this year, and have had a few tidbits of it to share here and there - but there's a lot more from that I could be getting online over the winter season.
Anyways... thats it for now. Protect your websites, your data, and yourself!
I know this is a photographer's blog, so let me know in the comments - is it crazy for me to make a post without a single photo on it? I might be experimenting with that - for things like this, there isn't exactly an image I have, that's meaningful to me, that would complement this story, and if it were a social media post, I'd likely leave it text anyway... So, text here too, seems fine by me.
Looking for other recent photos and short clips? Visit instagram
check out my instagram accounts @cgardinerphoto and @aerialmedia_gardiner for the very latest of what I find interesting.You can watch more videos too
Everything from real estate tours, how-to walkthroughs, photography gear reviews, software demos, and more. Visit my youtube channels to see the latest Chris Gardiner Photography in Collingwood on YouTube Display Ads Help Support This Blog. Thank You for Understanding!See More
There are even more places to see the my work online. For Collingwood locals, where Chris Gardiner Photography now also calls home, we've started the Photograph Collingwood Blog, a destination online to highlight the beautiful known and not-so-known locations in Collingwood and Blue Mountains.