i’ve been wrestling with my blog for the last couple weeks. one day i logged in and my dashboard looked like this:

which is really not right.

i contacted my website host (dreamhost) for support right away and, yes, i panicked a bit. the rest of my website seemed a-okay, however. i did a database restore from my web account and the next day it seemed like my little ol’ blog was back to normal.

then i logged in again a couple nights ago, and blog was sick again!

chrome was giving me the same warning it had given me a week or so ago, so this time i took it all much more seriously, with tips directly from wordpress. i backed up my SQL wordpress database and all of my wordpress files from my website. i changed passwords everywhere. i downloaded and ran the recommended virus-finding software for my mac. i reported the attack to dreamhost again. i changed my wordpress keys. i reinstalled wordpress from a .zip download and from the wonky dashboard. and i considered deleting everything — but luckily, this time, i don’t think it’ll come to that.

it turns out that macs can get viruses! who knew? after running the clamxav software, this report popped up:

i didn’t do anything about it right away (yesterday morning) because i had to go to work. however, when i got to work — my dashboard (via windows 7) looked a-okay and back to normal. what had changed? i wasn’t sure. when i got home again last night, the dashboard (via my mac) was sick again. i was getting so frustrated!

but then i remoted into my computer at work — and the dashboard was still fine there. so the problem must’ve been with my mac. so strange! i couldn’t see any other ill effects from the viruses the scanner found, except for on my wordpress dashboard.

so, last night i ran the scan again and opted to move the yucky files into a folder on my desktop. this time it only found the trojan.java files. i moved them to the trash and did a secure empty — and now my dashboard is a-okay again.

so that was very bizarre. i hope the drama is over now, but today i will be working on beefing up my wordpress’s security (and running the virus software one more time), just in case. i would be so sad if i lost my blog — it holds so many memories!