Someone claimed ownership of my site in WMT

[spiderspider]

Woke up this morning to an email from Google saying:

'New owner for http://mysite'

Reading through it I was a bit dismissive, until I logged into my webmaster tools console, and saw that somehow, someone had managed to verify themselves as an owner of that site, using the html file that I had uploaded ages ago, to verify myself.

I removed them, after having to remove the verification file, and checked to make sure nothing had been changed.

I'm normally pretty hot when it comes to scams and spams, but this is a new one on me. The site is a service industry site that just sits there, generating 2 or 3 leads a month. Its nothing special. Does anyone know anything about this type of thing, or had this happen to them?

 

[Adam H]

I wouldnt have thought that the file id's would be the same for different users ? Otherwise you could probably search google for a certain file type which included like :

allintext: google-site-verification: filetype:html

Add the site to your account and verify it using the same file :S . If anyone tries it and it works let me know lol.

 

[spiderspider]

Been doing some digging into this, and it turns out not to be my original verification file, but a hack on the site that was there. Looked back through a backup, and was defiantly a hack, that was done weeks ago.

My last and only Joomla site. So its now given me the kick up the butt to wipe it all and convert it over to WP.

 

[Adam H]

Been doing some digging into this, and it turns out not to be my original verification file, but a hack on the site that was there. Looked back through a backup, and was defiantly a hack, that was done weeks ago.

My last and only Joomla site. So its now given me the kick up the butt to wipe it all and convert it over to WP.

Joomla is still on key then haha, Binned Joomla some years ago now. Used to have a little network based on Joomla sites and it was more hassle then it was worth.

 

[RobM]

All third party frameworks, cms, etc have security holes. They get found... they patch and release a newer version. This is one reason why I don't host any clients using open source software.