Hi! I'm Taryn, a writer, designer and soon-to-be-bride from Atlanta, Georgia. Sit a spell with me and catch up as I plan the wedding of my beer-loving, confetti-throwing dreams to the wonderful Mr. Williford.Gootloader infection cleaned up
Dear blog owner and visitors,
This blog had been infected to serve up Gootloader malware to Google search victims, via a common tactic known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) poisioning. Your blog was serving up 385 malicious pages. Your blogged served up malware to 0 visitors.
I tried my best to clean up the infection, but I would do the following:
- Upgrade WordPress to the latest version (one way the attackers might have gained access to your server)
- Upgrade all WordPress themes to the latest versions (another way the attackers might have gained access to your server)
- Upgrade all WordPress plugins (another way the attackers might have gained access to your server), and remove any unnecessary plugins.
- Verify all users are valid (in case the attackers left a backup account, to get back in)
- Change all passwords (for WordPress accounts, FTP, SSH, database, etc.) and keys. This is probably how the attackers got in, as they are known to brute force weak passwords
- Run antivirus scans on your server
- Block these IPs (5.8.18.7 and 89.238.176.151), either in your firewall, .htaccess file, or in your /etc/hosts file, as these are the attackers command and control servers, which send malicious commands for your blog to execute
- Check cronjobs (both server and WordPress), aka scheduled tasks. This is a common method that an attacker will use to get back in. If you are not sure, what this is, Google it
- Consider wiping the server completly, as you do not know how deep the infection is. If you decide not to, I recommend installing some security plugins for WordPress, to try and scan for any remaining malicious files. Integrity Checker, WordPress Core Integrity Checker, Sucuri Security,
and Wordfence Security, all do some level of detection, but not 100% guaranteed - Go through the process for Google to recrawl your site, to remove the malcious links (to see what malicious pages there were, Go to Google and search site:your_site.com agreement)
- Check subdomains, to see if they were infected as well
- Check file permissions
Gootloader (previously Gootkit) malware has been around since 2014, and is used to initally infect a system, and then sell that access off to other attackers, who then usually deploy additional malware, to include ransomware and banking trojans. By cleaning up your blog, it will make a dent in how they infect victims. PLEASE try to keep it up-to-date and secure, so this does not happen again.
Sincerly,
The Internet Janitor
Below are some links to research/further explaination on Gootloader:
https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/03/01/gootloader-expands-its-payload-delivery-options/
https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2021/08/12/gootloaders-mothership-controls-malicious-content/
https://www.richinfante.com/2020/04/12/reverse-engineering-dolly-wordpress-malware
https://blog.sucuri.net/2018/12/clever-seo-spam-injection.html
Today’s the Day We Start Our Nest
This is it.
Today’s the day we become man and chick.
Roo and I have spent the last week finishing up wedding tasks and welcoming our friends and family into our new hometown for the party of a lifetime. But each day, we take a moment to remember the marriage we’re celebrating. In between the cutting and gluing and packing and moving, we find small moments to kiss or hug or smack each other on the butt. And laugh. So much laughing.
You see, Roo is my best friend. I know so much about him. And the best part is, I’m excited to know so much more. We have so many adventures in front of us, learning, laughing and growing together. And it all starts today.
Roo, I love you so much. Thank you for supporting me in everything. This wedding. This blog. I can’t wait to be your wife.
All the Things You Don’t Budget For
Weddings take a lot of stuff. Just ask my dining room. With three days to go, boxes and bags of wedding gear have taken over the place where we have candlelit dinner every night …room we don’t really use anyway.
And the thing is, we didn’t budget for any of this stuff. I mean, there were generic line items in our budget for things like “decor” and “attire,” but I never put much thought into the specifics of what we’d need to buy up in the weeks leading to the wedding. I just wrote $500 next to decor. It seemed like enough.
Spoiler alert: It was not enough. Here are some of the things that we’ve recently shelled out for to complete our wedding day:
Jamali Garden
- 24 white ceramic cube vases, $72
- 24 tall mason jars, $19
- One roll of 12″ kraft paper, $19
- 12 beer growlers, $39
- 36 beer bottles, free (thank God)
- 48 votive candles, $26
- 20 tall prayer candles, $20 (minus Jesus and Mary, plus custom printed vellum wraps)
- Flowers and plants, $447
- A big chalkboard, $12
- A little chalkboard, $7 (plus $20 shipping, what a racket!)
- A medium-sized chalkboard, $15
- Vinyl decals to stick on the chalkboards, $188 (money well spent, as far as I’m concerned, since I don’t have to actually draw anything)
- A few extra vinyl decals to fix some spelling mistakes we should have caught in the first place, $20 (whoops!)
Grand total for decor: $904
Only around $400 over budget. Whoops again!
The flowers, specifically, were way more than I expected, considering we’re DIY’ing all the florals for the wedding (I don’t buy flowers often, can you tell?). But I am so terribly excited to put it all together. So know this: Yes, your wedding budget is a scary number. But it will go up. It always does. Keep your head on straight and make sure every cent is well-spent to make you happy.
What last-minute expenses popped up for your big day?
Countdown to the Wedding
So… I’m getting married this weekend! To say we’ve been busy is an understatement. There have been lots of little details and decisions happening the past few weeks, and I’ll embellish on all of it in time. For now, here’s the final countdown.
Three Weeks to Go
The last few weekends before our wedding were filled with lots of non-wedding fun, like concerts and parties. I would advise any bride to keep busy with things that remind them they’re a person and not just a girl in a white dress. Don’t let the wedding keep you from living your life.
I finally picked my wedding band. I opted for something without diamonds, surprisingly. It’s a simple and sculptural yellow gold band, and I love it to pieces. I may or may not have already began wearing it.
We got our RSVPs back in record time, mainly because we have the best guests ever.
To thank the best guests ever, we’ve been hustling to fill up welcome bags for them to have in their hotel rooms. We’re making the bags Atlanta-themed and stuffing them with Coca Cola, Georgia peanuts, street maps and some local baby back rib-flavored potato chips.
Two Weeks to Go
October has been all about decisions. All those little things I’d told myself “we have plenty of time to deal with”? It was time to deal with them.
Heeding the advice of friends before us, we promptly got into the courthouse to get our marriage license. Good thing, too, because it took two visits thanks to long lines and mismatched work schedules.
Apologies for the potato-quality photo. The best camera is the one you have on you, right?
I’m making final decisions on all the little projects I have left to do. My DIY plan for these last two weeks is to finish up our tablescapes (flowers and the like), pack our welcome bags and figure out exactly what I’m going to do for a ceremony backdrop.
We met with our day-of coordinator at our venue and planned the wedding timeline, deciding once and for all to skip having a cocktail hour and relieving ourselves of the embarrassment of a public garter dance. No cocktail hour, no bouquet toss and absolutely no garter-ing.
Roo is telling me he’s having wedding dreams. I told him it was about time, since I’ve been having wedding dreams about everything going wrong since, like, day two.
Ten Days to Go
I’m checking the forecast obsessively. We picked October 11th because it’s historically the driest month in Atlanta, and I hate rain. But guess what? There are thunderstorms passing through this weekend. Can you believe it? Rain on our wedding day. Isn’t it ironic? A little too ironic, if you ask me. It wouldn’t be a big deal, I mean, rain photos are beautiful… except for the teeny tiny fact that we have to serve food outside. That’s kind of how food trucks go. It might be time to stock up on umbrellas.
Garrett Hubbard
Nine Days to Go
Yaasssss…. The forecast looks totally clear and perfect!
Eight Days to Go
Crap. It’s definitely going to rain.
One Week to Go
Our in-town friends have planned separate bachelor and bachelorette bashes for Roo and me. I had a really great time having dinner and dancing with the girls, and it made the wedding feel very real. The rest of the weekend after that was a blur. I don’t know whether to blame my “it’s really here” reality check, or the fact that I went to bed at 7:30 am Sunday morning.
Six… Five…
Paying for that late night with an inconsistent sleep schedule. This early part of our wedding week is all about getting back to normal for me. I’m trying to get my sleep back on track, and stay hydrated so I can look and feel my best on Saturday. I’m at work until Wednesday, so it’s time to wrap things up and get ready for the big day. And the honeymoon. Actually, I don’t know which one I’m more excited about.
How did you spend your last few days before the wedding? Any advice?
Raise Your Hand if You Hate Wedding Planning
I thought planning a wedding would be the best time of my life. The celebration, the details, the crafting; I live for this stuff. And yet, I’ve spent the later part of our engagement resenting our wedding.
First of all, let me say this: I don’t feel anything but joy for our marriage. I love Rooster, and committing to spending every day with him is the most natural and exuberant thing in the world to me. But when it comes to The Wedding, I’ve been feeling a bit lost. When we were first engaged 17 months ago, I anticipated spending a modest amount on a very practical party. For me, it would be all about the marriage. But somewhere along the way, I got caught up in weddings. I spent most of the time battling between what I could do and what I wanted to do, and I’ll admit that I lost sight of our practical goals. Or maybe I just recognized that the pomp meant more to me than I’d imagined in the first place.
Our small wedding turned into a big drain on our time, our thoughts and our wallets. And if I’m being totally honest, I began to resent it. I’ve heard newlywed brides say that after their own hectic days were done and behind them, they wished they’d just eloped, and I certainly expected to feel the same way. I never expected, however, to feel that way before the wedding was even here.
So instead of post-wedding depression, I fell into a pre-wedding depression. For the past few months, I put off tasks and projects related to our big day. I just tried to live day-to-day, worrying about work and “real life” and not this expensive and intricate party that I’d grown to resent. I keep using the word “resent,” because I can’t find the right words to describe the way I felt about our wedding during those months. I was still excited for our day, after all. Excited to spend time with our family and affirm our love for each other in front of the people we care about. But in planning our day, I got away from all that and began to worry too much about making it perfect, and started to hate how much time and money we were pouring into our perfect day. So I stopped caring about wedding planning for a while. I was still checking things off the list despite my melancholy, mostly because we’d signed enough contracts and checks to ensure we couldn’t just hit the rewind button on the big bash. But while I did it all, I just felt… detached.
But something happened yesterday, with less than one week to go until our wedding: I got really, really excited. And proud. And now I’m ready to share the things I’ve been working on in silence with you, Hive. There’s plenty that has been done and decided since I left you, and there’s still more to go in these last five days. (As a critical procrastinator, I’ve put off a lot of projects. Classic Miss Hen.) I’ll get through as much as I can here in the home stretch, then after the wedding, I’ll continue sharing all the things we’ve been working on for our wedding day.
I’m sorry for being a bad blogger and going missing in action for the past month, but I hope you understand why. When you’re trying to repress the stress of planning a wedding, getting online and waxing about it is the furthest thing from your mind. By writing this, I hope I’ve earned your forgiveness. And I hope that I might help somebody else out there feeling the same things. Planning a wedding might not be all it’s cracked up to be for you, and that’s totally OK.
So I hope you’ll have me back, Hive! This wedding is shaping up to be amazing, after all, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
