Re: Little Nightmares-CODEX Game Hack Password
Genciana Haggins
After the hack today that took down some pretty major sites out there that we all use on a daily basis, I wanted to share some helpful information I've come across in the WordPress world. I myself have been hacked twice. Ever since moving my photography business website from a big company, I've finally been able to move on with my life.
Even though today's massive attack affected mostly DNS, your websites server can be attacked at anytime. This is where some helpful little tools can come in handy and help keep us moving along business as usual! This article mostly speaks to those of you using WordPress as your content management system (CMS), and since that is where my hacking experience lies, I don't want to give advice to other platforms.
Without this plugin, I wouldn't have caught the string of text at the bottom of each of my 177 posts that was causing every blog post on my site to re-direct to some online pharmaceutical company. Thank the code gods because I could've moved my site and infected the new server, further opening that door to my online business.
Since my switch away from the domain and hosting giant whom I now despise, I've been thrilled with the new service I acquired. Finding not only excellent customer service, I'm now hosted with a company who watches for these types of behaviors and alerts the users if they feel a server is infected and that your site might be a target. If that wasn't ultra helpful enough, they'll take it upon themselves to move you to an entirely new server that has no red flags and give you 14 days to make any changes.
Being a photographer, I don't want to have to monitor my website all day, every day. Heck, I don't want to monitor it at all! So, going through the painful process of rebuilding our 10 years of work and Internet history really opened my eyes to how important it is doing business in a digital age and knowing you have security. Cyber attacks are becoming more and more evil and are an online business' worst nightmare, and the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack is one such attack that can cause a massive damage to any service. More information on the attack itself can be found here.
I'd like to mention that when I used Wordfence on my website, it added about 1.27 seconds additional load time at the initial homepage and slightly less time on other pages. Overall its an awesome tool but I had to get rid of the plugin because of the sluggish load time even on GoDaddy's SSD Wordpress hosting plan.
Hey man, spikes in page load times should be expected when using Wordfence since it's not a network; rather, Wordfence appears to be software. So, Wordfence is still dependent on a network (whatever network or kind of network it is). Depending on what (if any) network service or specific network placement, "initial homepage" load times might be longer compared to other pages due to various variables including network, but also how the website is developed and delivered to the network.
The attack didn't affect "mostly DNS" in a generic sense, as the article reads (not a slam to the article whatsoever); however, it was targeted at a specific domain name service (DNS) provider, DYN. This is important to know since a lot of DNS providers weren't affected; however, they could've been slowed if their traffic was moving through an attacked, shut down, or partially shut down network. This is to say that DYN most likely has domain names that have data going through more than a single network.
I can't attest to Wordfence and the [awesomeness of the tool], but "GoDaddy's SSD Wordpress hosting plan" sounds a lot like marketing speak to me and marketing speak doesn't sound like online security. That's just me though, it could very well be the best hosting plan ever. I just recall Brinkster beginning to use the term "hosting plan" around 2001 and that's about the time they went to shit...
I'd also advise enabling 2FA (there's a number of plug-ins that do this) and limiting access to the WP Login pages to specific range of IP addresses through htaccess if you're able to (if you have a fixed IP Address) and/or limiting log-in to SSL.
I'd also recommend companies that specialise in WP hosting such as Media Temple as they tend to understand the security risks better than many hosting companies and usually have good track records with security.
The problem with the current attack DDoS is that it's basically unstoppable at present, the underlying code has been responsible for two of the largest attacks so far and took out Kreb's own website despite having a company who managed the attack and was unable to continue. One way to mitigate DDoS is rely on a proxy like Cloudflare or use a geographic CDN which unless you're international doesn't make sense. The actual problem is the lack of security in IoT and people's ignorance but that's a different topic and discussion and it's only going to get worse. If you're interested here's some info:
Yep, good password security is the key for photographers. If you're getting hit by a strong DDoS, you're toast. Even big companies who have millions of dollars invested in IT can still have their site taken down for long periods of time, so for most of us it's just not worth the investment unless we're extremely famous and controversial.
I'd also recommend being as independent of CMS as possible, as the more services your site uses the more risk there is of you not securing an entry point properly, or the CMS having a security flaw itself. Personally, I recently moved my blog section to WordPress for ease of use, but the rest of my site doesn't use any CMS. Of course, I also work as a web developer, so it's easy for me to custom code things. If you're using WordPress for your whole site to make things easy, it's going to be fine most of the time, as long as you have good password security it's unlikely that you'll be the victim of hacking.
EDIT: Password security includes making sure that any devices you use are secure as well - no unauthorized downloads and periodic scans for viruses. Maybe even using a completely separate machine or virtual machine for total security.
Thanks for this information, Amber. I already use Akismet for spam. I don't get all the tech talk in the links to BulletProof and Wordfence - Is one of them sufficient, or do you use both (all three)?
Also, who is your new hosting company that you like so much?
LOL, I figured that but I wanted to hearing from you. Believe it or not, I have over 200 sites with GoDaddy, 90% of them are clients of mine but I'm going to move my personal site to WpEngine and see how they are. By the way, if I say you referred me will they give you credit?
Unless you've been living under a 'down-B' Kirby-shaped brick since last September, Kirby fans are probably aware that a free-to-start Kirby game called Super Kirby Clash is available to play on Nintendo Switch.
The game has you choosing from four different roles - Sword Hero, Hammer Lord, Beam Mage, or Doctor Healmore - before joining up with friends to take on tough bosses. We've got more details on how the game works right here if you're interested, but for now, we want to talk about Passwords.
You see, Super Kirby Clash allows you to enter passwords to gain extra rewards like Gem Apples and Fragments - goodies you'll need to obtain weapons and keep going when your party runs out of vigor. If you're desperate for more items and don't want to wait for that timer to tick all the way down, you might want to give these passwords a shot.
Passwords aren't region locked, meaning you can change your keyboard's language regardless of your Switch's region to input other codes, but for the sake of simplicity, we've separated all of the known passwords by region below. The following have been discovered through HAL Laboratory on Twitter, the game's official site, and more. Special thanks to Perfectly-Nintendo for rounding up some of the harder-to-find codes.
@oatmaster
Haven't looked into it yet, but if it's like the 3DS game, there will be a limit on the number of gem apples you can buy, and buying the maximum amount will drastically increase the number of free gem apples you can claim on each cooldown, however long the cooldown is.
My recollection is that if you've bought a certain number of gem apples, the tree that grows gem apples gets bigger and will grow more apples, and there are multiple levels for this tree. So it encourages you to spend at least a small amount to progress things.
Using those 7000+ gem apples you can purchase all the books that increase the rate of stamina recovery so you'll negate the need to wait as well. (Plus refilling stamina only costs 2 gem apples if you do happen to run out)
Seems like some passwords are counted as the same one whether you input them in English or Japanese (GEMAPPLES = まいつきリンゴプレゼント) and some aren't (SUPERKIRBYCLASH != スーパーカービィハンターズ), which is kinda confusing.
I've downloaded it. Played the 3DS one with my sons too, and though I never paid for anything there, I splurged 40 cent on a couple of apples to grow the tree a bit and spend my last couple of gold coins. My boys love this game, and it's fun to play with the three of us.
I mean, there is nothing forcing you to spend money on it, there's nothing even forcing you to download this game. It's a wonderful little time filler, and that is all it is. It's not a full game and shouldn't be viewed as such. It's meant for those moments when you are not feeling like playing a SNES game.
@Roronoa11 No need to jump in and correct you. It's basically a slightly upgraded version of the 3DS game. I think there are more or at least different badges to acquire, I think there are more books you can buy, you can buy useless stickers, but from what I've seen so far the four classes, weapons and armour are the same. Maybe some high tier weapons and armour exist that are new, but so far not much new.
I enjoyed the 3ds version which I spent 30 bucks on. Which so happened to be the price of a cheaper 3ds game so... In the end it was like just buying a 3ds game but in chunks. If I spend hours playing it again and trying to beat the achievements and spend the 40 dollars than it would cost about the price of a lower priced Switch game.
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