News Flash, September 6

The Debutante Ball has been nominated for a Book Bloggers Appreciation Week Award for the most collaborative blog. Way to go Debs AND all of our fabulous collaborators!

Australian rights sold for The Opposite of Me by Deb Sarah! Simon & Schuster Australia will publish simultaneously with Simon & Schuster’s Atria/Washington Square Press imprint on March 9, 2010.

Deb Joelle is excited to announce her first blurb for her novel Restoring Harmony (Putnam, May 2010) by one of her favourite authors. Armed with only a fiddle and a keen sense of the land, Molly is the best kind of heroine–smart, feisty and courageous. Anthony writes with tenderness and imbues her story with hope. Suzanne Selfors, author of SAVING JULIET and COFFEHOUSE ANGEL (read the entire blurb here)

Want to see Graduate Deb Kristina in action? An eight-minute television interview aired recently on a local TV show called Take Five, and is archived here. Also, Real Life & Liars is a September pick at Book End Babes, a cool new chain of book clubs launched by former Deb guest Malena Lott. To that end, there’s a video of Kristina reading from Liars, here.

Check out what else Malena and the Book End Babes are up to by clicking here, including information on how to start your very own chapter so you can party with your girlfriends and start a reading revolution!.

Hi Joelle,

I had a chance to look at your site today. I know I said I wouldn’t modify anything before I contacted you again, however I found some dangerous files on your site, and felt immediate action was more appropriate.
There were two different exploits hidden on your site. One was a package called “c999sh” which can allow a hacker to gain shell access to the underlying server (behind WordPress). That is very dangerous. This exploit was stored in a file “wp-includes/wp-functions.php” but this is not a real WordPress file. I’ve deleted this file, its not necessary for the correct operation of WordPress.
The second exploit was prepended to your current theme “Beautiful Day”. Like the other exploit, this allowed someone to execute code on the underlying server. I couldn’t locate a correct copy of that theme from anywhere online but in reading the way the code was constructed I’m pretty certain I’ve neutralized the threat. The exploit was stored in a file “wp-content/themes/beautiful-day-10/header.php”. I’ve removed the offending code but otherwise left the theme itself intact.
I also manually looked for other similar exploits but didn’t find any.
You should probably copy the text above and forward it to your friend. Its possible this exploit has affected his other sites too.
There was one file heavily modified from the original WordPress distribution for the currently installed version. I don’t quite understand why but the modifications do not appear to be dangerous. I need to do some more research before I can safely attempt an upgrade.
Bob