The social media world is in chaos as two of the leading social media sites have been attacked. Today Twitter is experiencing a prolonged down time due to a malicious Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS). Facebook too has acknowledged that their periodical website issues too are due to DDoS activity.

A Facebook representative stated that “Earlier this morning, Facebook encountered network issues related to an apparent distributed denial of service attack, that resulted in degraded service for some users. No user data was at risk and we have restored full access to the site for most users. We’re continuing to monitor the situation to ensure that users have the fast and reliable experience they’ve come to expect from Facebook.”

The popular blogging community Live Journal is also under attack from DDoS. None of these attacks are coincident, we are in the middle of an intentional attack on the world’s most popular social media sites: Facebook, Twitter and Live Journal.

The question that we now need to ask is who will be next?

Well for me I don’t think it is about strong passwords only, computer hackers are not only attacking weak passwords, but they now have ways of attaching malwares to our PC which allows them to see the characters that we type on our keyboard when we log in to various systems. Don’t get me wrong it is important to have strong passwords but in the current state that cyberspace is in; it is very important for us to develop good security standards for our sites and everyday life of surfing.

I see where site platforms are being hacked too often.
However I think this is our fault as developers, we use WordPress, Joomla, Plone,Magento, and lots of other Opensource systems which have basic standards of coding. Once WordPress, Joomla, Plone,Magento is hacked the system is compromised for all of us.Because once a hacker hacks one WordPress site, it is highly likely that he can hack 90% of all WordPress sites on the web.

It is getting a lot easier for hackers because the web is becoming standard with Opensource Content Management Systems.
What we need to do is not only customize our interface but also the coding of the platform in areas that count.
Using .htassess file for a password protect of admin panels is enough to block access for normal every day user of our site, but the question is; can that stop a professional computer hacker or even an amateur?

Go to Google and type in “how to hack WordPress”or Joomla.
I think you will see where I’m coming from.