Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The popular impression of the blogger is of a compulsive type who spends every waking minute at the keyboard constantly checking the hit counter on her site. Rainy Day does not conform to the stereotype, though, and so we spent all day yesterday away from the net, never once looking at our beloved blog. A long day's listening and talking was followed by an evening in the cinema enjoying the superb new Bond film, Casino Royale (more later) and so it was around midnight that we toddled back to base. The LED on the phone was blinking, indicating that calls had come in during the day, and the "You've got mail" symbol was active as well. Shock! Horror! All the messages said that Rainy Day had been hacked!

Nora K in the south of Ireland, Lisa F on the west coast of the USA and Tim B in Australia wanted to know what had happened, and so did we. One witness described the scene of the crime in the following words: "A dark screen with a cat or panther's face emerging and growling, jaws wide open, teeth bared. Then, in capital letters 'You've been hacked!' Lots of numbers and figures showing and underneath a web address, something like 'hackers.com' and lots of odd symbols." According the very dependable Rainy Day host, "there was a security problem with an application on the server which allowed the hacker to edit website index pages only. This occurred on several accounts which we have restored and we have blocked access to all accounts through this application in the future so it will not happen again."

So, who would bother defacing Rainy Day? Well, over the years, we have offended almost everyone: the Russian mafia, the Guardian, Syrian thugs, socialists, the BBC, Islamists, the vain German ex-chancellor who dyes his hair but threatens to sue those who point out this fact, feminists, the Irish Times, pacifists, Saddam, environmentalists… to mention just the most dangerous. It could have been any of these, or a combination, or someone different. Regardless, we will not be intimidated, no ransom will be paid and a decision about sending a "Happy Thanksgiving" e-mail to the White House later today will not be affected by this incident.

UPDATE: Thanks to Xtian for the big cat and to Henry Barth for identifying the hacker.