Oh, happy day.

Okay, so my webpage is working again.

I was very happy when I finally got my files back.

I have now made my machine secure again, as far as I know, so no more hacking attempts… I hope.

Now, I can actually attempt to get the printer working… remember the printer? The thing that started this week-long mess?

And it gets even worse

So, yesterday I was able to recover three of the four partitions from the old hard drive. Of course, the data I need is on the fourth partition.

I spend most of yesterday trying to figure out some way of automating the process of trying every single partition boundary, then checking if a legitamate filesystem starts there… and I think I thought of one right before I went to sleep, but I don’t want to think about it any more, so I go to bed.

This morning, Luke knocks on my door to tell me that Ken had to shut down my machine because it was hosing the network. (Luckily, he just disconnected it, not turned it off.)

Long story short… I got hacked.

The bastard hacked root access, used my machine to DoS other machines (which was sucking up our bandwidth) and then cleaned his tracks. Turns out there’s this nice little program out there on the dark side of the Internet that allows any script kiddie to do this quickly and easily, and all they have to do it point it at a machine.

You see, because I’ve been reinstalling Linux so many times, I’ve forgotten to close certain ports… and paid for it.

I just want things to work again. I literally broke down and cried last night. I just can’t let it be. I can’t go out and enjoy myself, because I know that this problem is still there waiting for me.

Oh, and it goes without saying that if I ever find out who you are, you bastard, I’ll kill you.

(Kick a man while he’s down… what a miserable excuse for a human being.)