The Evil Within (My Website)

I have been complaining for a few weeks now about the disappearance of my website from Google. It was a problem that only appeared when a page was clicked directly from a search engine, not entered by hand. Instead of my blog, spammy pages of links appeared, looking like they were coming from geofffox.com.

I looked and looked and couldn’t find the content ascribed to me. Nothing.

A few times, I asked for assistance from the Google Groups Webmaster Help Forum. They didn’t solve my problem, but they did help me figure out where to look.

Tonight, I think the mystery is solved.

On November 23 at 9:04 PM and again on Dec 10 at 10:54 AM someone gained access to my server.

Whether it was a hack or exploit doesn’t matter. My host would like me to think it was an exploit – meaning it was through my doing. Whatever.

New .htaccess files were inserted in every directory on my web site. These files, which begin with a dot to make them normally invisible, control how certain web requests are handled.

These .htaccess files looked for 404 errors. That’s what you get when a page is missing.

This explains why I couldn’t find the spammy files on my website. This exploit only worked if a file name that DOESN’T exist was entered. Only then were they composed on-the-fly.

On top of that, a second file specified the trick should only worked if the request was coming from a search engine. No wonder I couldn’t make these spammy pages appear.

As awful as it is, I have respect for the programmer who accomplished this. It’s a very sneaky trick, and it sat on my site for a few months before I discovered it.

The .htaccess file called a php file, which is similar to the one this web page is served to your browser on. One set of these php files had an all numeric filename (002314.php, etc) and was 617 bytes long. The other used simple computer-ish names (server.php, command.php, etc.) and was 1260 bytes.

Every web attack has a weak spot and I had found it. Having the files all be the same length, and placed on my machine on specific days, made it easier to scout them out.

To make matters worse, permissions were changed all over the place. These are the rules that decide who can or cannot read, write or execute files. Lots of stuff was turned 777, meaning anyone could do anything!

The person who attacked my machine had opened all the doors. Now anyone could gain access and do anything.

Good grief!

I called on my friend Bob Hart to help.

Bob claims not be be a computer expert. Right.

His logical, organized, well exercised mind knew all the commands and tricks to remove thousands of files and reset an equal number of pointers without hurting anything. He dictated long strings of characters for me to type in… and they worked!

Is there an Emmy for computer assistance? I nominate Bob.

So, now you know the good news. The bad news is, it can happen again because I don’t know how the miscreants got in. I’m working on that next.

Hopefully, in deleting files, rewriting permissions and changing passwords, I will slow them down until a solution is found.

Once again, I’m begging Google to let me back into their good graces. Traffic on the blog is down about 75%. Geofffox.com has slid off the face of the Earth!

It’s The Emmys

It’s been a few years since I entered the Emmys. It’s a very weird competition. It’s totally arbitrary. Winning is totally without rhyme or reason. Judges get few guidelines.

Helaine thinks the whole process is ridiculous. She very well may be right.

One year I won. The next year I wasn’t nominated. Honest. Go figure.

I am lucky enough to have seven sitting in a case in my family room. From a practical standpoint, seven is the same as ten or three.

Actually, seven is better than ten. Having ten would make it look too easy.

All of this is the setup for what will transpire Sunday.

Gil Simmons, at my station, has volunteered to coordinate Emmy judging for the San Francisco/Northern California region. I volunteered the location, my house.

It looks like we’ll have six or seven of us watching the DVDs. The more the merrier. I sent a few more emails tonight, trying my best to guilt the last stragglers into coming.

For some of the younger guys&#185, this will be a revealing process. Seeing how the Emmys are judged is helpful when you’re deciding what to submit the next year.

It will be interesting to see how they treat the weather in an area where weather usually isn’t as important. It will also be interesting to ‘take notes’ on how their weather equipment is being used. We mostly use the same, or similar, tools. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of a technique or twist you hadn’t thought of.

Last time I was a judge there were moments when I wondered, “What were they thinking when they sent in this tape?” Hopefully, that won’t be the case again.

&#185 – It has been pointed out, all the weather people in this market are men… white men. That’s becoming more and more unusual.

Way To Go Wendie

Wendie Feinberg and I have been friends for over twenty years (since she was 3). She was my boss here – though I try not to hold that against her. For the past few years she’s been producing the Nightly Business Report on PBS.

It’s interesting, because I don’t think most people think of this ‘quiet’ show as the most watched financial program on TV, but it is!

Today Wendie was in New York for the annual Emmy Awards. We hoped and kept our fingers crossed… which is undoubtedly why she won.

Outstanding Extended Coverage of a Business Story

* Nightly Business Report

China’s Emergence as an International Economic Power – PBS

Until late 2004, Americans were likely to see China mainly as a huge untapped market for Western firms. But then in early 2005 this (politically) communist nation seemed to turn the tables. Chinese manufacturers began to account for a larger share of both low-end and high-end goods worldwide Soon Chinese companies were not only taking on American firms on their own terms, they were taking over American firms themselves. By mid-2005, China was regarded as an economic power to be reckoned with. In this series Nightly Business Report covers the steps that led to this startling transformation and the American reaction to it, and goes on to find out why China made the decision to go beyond its borders to become a major force on the global economic scene.

** Senior Producer

Wendie Feinberg

** Washington Bureau Chief

Darren Gersh

** New York Bureau Chief

Scott Gurvey

** Managing Editor

Rodney Ward

** Producer

Stephanie Dhue

** Reporter

Nick Mackie

I have seven local Emmys. They have rectangular bases and any Emmy aficionado can easily see they’re second class Emmy citizens. Wendie has the heavyweight round based Emmy. I am so jealous.

She deserves this award, as does her team who did an amazing job reporting under difficult conditions from China.

Nothing makes me happier than to see my friends do well.

New Haven Advocate – Best Of

I am thrilled to have been voted “Best of New Haven” in the TV personality category. OK – it’s not like winning the Oscar (or the New England Emmy – ouch), but it’s the best I can do from here.

I enjoy going to the New Haven Advocate’s offices. They used to be in Long Wharf, but have moved to an office building atop the now closed Chapel Square Mall. They really do belong in Downtown New Haven (this is not a pejorative statement), considering they’re the pulse of local entertainment, dining and a bit of really good muckraking.

What makes going to the Advocate fun is hanging with people who write for a living. Writing good prose is not easy. Plus, there’s the jealousy factor. In a newspaper, the printed word is pretty close to permanent. TV is gone in an instant.

There’s another advantage to print, which you didn’t see, but I just used in the last sentence. I was able to revise my words and make decent writing a little better. Computers in general, and word processors specifically, have changed the skill of writers in much the same way the Hubble Space Telescope changed the astronomers!

I mentioned, to one of the reporters at the paper, how envious I was of writers . She said if I were writing, I’d miss television. There’s no doubt TV is the most powerful medium of expression ever unleashed on an unsuspecting public. It’s just not as elegant as the printed word.

The Advocate offices, on the 11th floor, have a commanding view of New Haven. It gave me the chance to get a good photo of a sad artifact of the city’s past. On a tower, atop the abandoned and derelict Macy’s Department Store building, is a broken TV aerial.

It’s from an era when there was a department store, with a TV department, in a pre-cable city. Macy’s has been gone since 1993. The fallen antenna lives on as sad testament to what was.

It’s Emmy Time in New England

The Boston/New England Chapter of NATAS has their Emmy big nomination party listed on their website for tonight, April 5th. It’s the first night of Passover, so it seemed a strange time to have a party… and I was right. This afternoon I got an email telling me the celebration is tomorrow (when many people also have Passover Seders).

Either way, I’m already in worry mode. I have foolishly set myself up for disaster. Normally, I sour on my tape as the postman is taking it away. Not so this year.

The tape opens with a phenomenal animation by Chris Kirby, our art director. I told him what I wanted and he exceeded any possible expectation. With it, I was able to explain a strange weather event, with only a trace of frozen precipitation, that had half the state in traffic for hours.

Chris deserves the credit, but as the judges watched the tape, hopefully it reflected well on me. That’s my perception based on my judging experience of last summer.

See – I am setting myself up for disaster.

Helaine has already told me (and this is not the first time), if I’m nominated, she’s not going. The past few times, I didn’t either. The ceremony is very long. The chapter covers a huge geographic area – so many of us don’t even know the other nominees. With weather toward the tail end, it’s a tedious evening at best. And, odds are, most nights you get nothing for your wait.

I have been exceptionally lucky, winning 7 Emmys over the years. On a few occasions, I thought my winning tape was awful. I have won and then not even been nominated the next year. It’s a crap shoot, decided by strangers in a strange city, often enticed by nothing more than free pizza!

We’ll see what happens tomorrow.

Emmy Judging

This has been an exercises in frustration. I volunteered to coordinate judging of the Weathercaster Emmy for the Mid-America region (basically St. Louis and Kansas City) and sent out dozens of invitations to other weather people around New England, including many who I know enter themselves… and got very few responses.

If it weren’t for the fact that it was summer, some folks were on vacation, the AMS convention had taken place last week, I’d name names because I’m pissed. I don’t mind that only a few people said yes. I’m more upset at how many didn’t respond at all!

Anyone who enters the Emmy’s expects more… and deserves it.

Our Emmy panel was comprised of Matt Scott and Gil Simmons and me from WTNH, Michael Friedman from Fox61 (WTIC TV) and Jayne Smith (meteorologist and former weather intern turned weather producer). We watched 9 tapes. Helaine was the ‘caterer’ and as is always the case, we ate wonderfully… and then had pizza for good measure.

The rules say I shouldn’t discuss individual tapes, and I won’t, but I will discuss the general quality of the entrants and the tape content itself. No one really stood out. There were two who I thought were better than the rest… but not by much. There is less of an edge or style to these Midwestern folks than what we see here in the East and a lot more nuts and bolts meteorology (which I’m by no means criticizing).

By and large, there was not enough “talent at chromakey” on the tapes.

It seems all but one of these entrants confused a good location with a good presentation. Because you’re somewhere, and something beyond your control has happened, doesn’t mean what you’re doing is special.

Don Fitzpatrick, TV talent guru, used to talk about reporter audition tapes that included a live shot from the president coming to town. Unless you got that exclusive one-on-one with the prez, ditch the tape.

At this hour, all our score sheets (which I haven’t sneaked a peek at) are in the Airborne envelope, waiting to go out with the tapes on Monday.

Weeding the front yard

I’ve volunteered to host Emmy judging tomorrow. So far, the response has been really poor, and it’s a shame for the weather people in St. Louis that we won’t have a bigger crowd to see their tapes.

Helaine asked if I would go and weed our two front beds, so we might make a good impression. Yikes! That stuff grows like… oh yeah, I guess it’s supposed to.

It’s funny. If you plant tomatoes or flowers or anything you really want, you have to take extra special care to make sure they grow healthfully. But a weed! It doesn’t give a damn. It will grow anywhere.

I’ve seen weeds growing in the cracks in a sidewalk, through concrete, and my favorite, in the rock face that makes up the ‘canyon walls’ on the Cross Bronx Expressway.

Weeds are the pigeon of the flora world.

While I was down on my hands and knees weeding, I did notice one unusual thing. This is a major year for worms. I couldn’t believe how many of them I found. They were all very fat and anxious to get away from me.

I’m sure they noticed I was wearing gloves and realized that meant any worm inhibitions I might normally have were out the window.

Emmy judging

I am a 7-time Emmy Award winner (OK – it’s the local rectangular base version, not that nice round national one – shoot me), so I have some sort of obligation to NATAS and will try and fulfill that by hosting an Emmy judging party for the St. Louis region next Saturday.

I found an email from the NWS in Taunton, MA and took all the email addresses from there. Hopefully, I didn’t miss too many people.

A long time ago, Helaine and I attended a judging session held at Channel 8. Good God! It is scary to think this is how it’s done. People were inattentive and we hardly ever got through an entire tape.

I hope to live up to that high standard at this session.

Here’s the letter I sent:

Hi (Insert Name Here),

I’m writing this extremely personal note on behalf of the Boston/New England Chapter of NATAS and the annual Emmy awards. As you may know, each year entries from our area are judged by our peers in other markets, where it doesn’t rain every day during the month of August and the dew point doesn’t stay above 70 for- – – oh sorry – – – I haven’t taken my medication yet.

Anyway, as we are judged, we are called upon to judge others. This year, it’s your chance to steal good lines and map drawing techniques as we watch the weather people from St. Louis, MO and environs.

Would you be willing to help judge? I have volunteered my house in Hamden, CT to host a judging session next Saturday (8-16) at noon. Pizza and soft drinks will be provided. Ivy the dog will be there for one-on-one petting sessions.

It’s your chance to meet some of your fellow weather people, tell us how awful your station’s owners and management are, and trash everything you see from St. Louis. You’ll get a better understanding why the Emmy always seems to go to some no talent… sorry… again no medication yet.

As an incentive to you in other states, many Connecticut State Police officers have pledged to write no tickets to anyone traveling below the current temperature (Celsius only). You folks in Boston should remember we schlep there every year for the actual Emmy ceremonies, so don’t kvetch.

Please let me know if you can attend. Detailed directions will be provided.

Your name and email address was actually plucked off an email from Glenn Field at NWS. If you’re now out of the business, selling cars, please excuse the intrusion.

All the best,

Geoff Fox

WTNH News Channel 8

ps – You know, most people read the “ps” before they read the letter.