Free Technology Tutorials

I noticed a post in the moodle.org forums today that grabbed my attention for a few reasons:

1. It is reporting yet another Moodle site being hacked…that’s about a bazillion and counting now
2. It’s not just any Moodle site…it’s actually a site set-up specifically for a Moodle Moot (a type of Moodle conference that typically attracts a hand full of Moodle evangelist)
3. It was hacked the same day the Moot was scheduled to take place — Ouch!

Here is an excerpt from the person making the post…

This is a very low traffic site. (www.XXXXXXXX.com) that is used for a Moot we held yesterday. I don’t know if someone decided to be cute by hacking the site on the day of the Moot or what but if that is the case I guess it is quite imperative to figure out how.

But what really caught my interest is that he has made several posts about this in the forums and not a single “expert” over there has pointed out that this PHM, who is hosting a Moodle Moot, of all things, is actually running Moodle version 1.9.4 on his site…a version that is around 18 months old. Someone needs to help this poor guy out and tell him he needs to upgrade…of course, that may not help prevent his site from being hacked, but at least the version won’t show in the footer of his Moodle site any longer. You see, Moodle HQ removed that info a few months ago when I pointed out that one of their largest official Moodle partners was hosting sites (and still is, by the way) that were even more out-of-date than this one 

Moodle Security — An oxymoron if there ever was one!