July 6 was supposed to be a "Defacer's Challenge" hack, where a bunch of web hackers were going to attempt to hack as many web sites as possible.
Obviously, DBR was concerned, even though we've done the best we could to keep the site secure, one never knows if there's a new exploit that hasn't been published. We took some precautions against being hacked, and we monitored the site more closely, as a precaution. While we did log a few more attempts to break into the site (DBR averages two break-in attempts per day) the site remained unhacked and available to readers.
Now, we read that around 500 sites were hacked.
The hackers did not hit major websites, but, instead the smaller web sites were taken down. These are sites that may not be able to have full-time technical coverage, or which are being run by non-technical people. It is criminal that these sites were targeted for some punks personal gratification.
In the past, DBR has been forced to move as a result of one of these hacks. We were sharing space on a friend's machine. This person believed in security through obscurity, so instead of secure communications, we had non-standard ports for telnet, and the like. The machine was regularly hacked, and the final hack resulted in that friend deciding that running a web site wasn't worth the effort. So, we ended up needing to find a new home, quickly.
One wonders how many of these hacked sites will decide that continuing to run a web site isn't worth the effort. Even if it is just one, the loss of that site, for this reason, is a shame.