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Blogger tracks down the guy who hacked him, publishes his name and photo

justinsomnia.org — Justin Watt discovers that his website disappeared from Google search results. He investigates, discovers that he was hacked by a Russian SEO hacker scumbag, then he TRACKS THE GUY DOWN. Vadim Smelyansky, you have been p0wned.

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  • minsight, on 10/10/2007, -60/+42PS. There is no 0 in pwned.
    • SniperZero, on 10/10/2007, -43/+15He is saying powned which seems to me a miss interpretation of pwned. People seem to think pwned is said powned when its actually pronounced owned. It came up because of a typo when people typed owned they typed pwned by accident thats how it started. Who ever the fk started saying powned is a retard.
      • CurrentResident, on 10/10/2007, -14/+22Maybe as retarded as explaining the origins of pwned to a group of computer geeks.
        • Rustbelt, on 10/10/2007, -17/+4I'm digging him down just for knowing the origin of the worst cliche on the internet.
      • twelvedogs, on 10/10/2007, -10/+56i want a pwnie
        • 6ixStringJack, on 11/08/2007, -17/+9Don't know why that's getting dug down. I want a pwnie is some funny *****.
      • vikktor, on 10/10/2007, -31/+3"pwned" actually originated from World of Warcraft when "The Deadmines" boss Van Clief while talking in the 3rd Person says "Van Clief 'Pwnes' You!" after killing you... it was apparently a typo made by WoW programmers that went unnoticed... however due to the extend of its self-made popularity they[WoW] have what appears to be no intention of correcting it.
      • Yurhiness, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1i hate you
    • gforce42, on 10/10/2007, -6/+31A pwnie to ride with Al Capwn
    • simpleid, on 10/10/2007, -5/+7but there is in p0wned!
    • simpleid, on 10/10/2007, -8/+3but there is in p0wned!

      how the hell... duplicates? my comments are cloning!
    • BrewBeau, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13wpw! pwned isn't even a wprd.
    • reaganluver, on 10/10/2007, -4/+0I don't wanna use ur gay counterstrike language..
    • skankyBacon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's the same way "teh" got started. It was just a common misspelling, then people started doing it on purpose. I hope people aren't saying "teh" in real life (aside from making jokes and such).
    • capellathestar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Sorry you got dugg down, I second your objection.
  • resplence, on 10/10/2007, -59/+11I know I will be dugg down.
  • 10goto10, on 10/10/2007, -16/+229Dude, that's awesome. Maybe you can help me out too, my best friend forgot her Hotmail password...
    • marcz, on 10/10/2007, -59/+4Don't tell me you are serious.
    • darkkosmos, on 10/10/2007, -57/+2forgeting your password has nothing to do with hackers! If you forget it you have to recover the password:)
    • heavyd14, on 10/10/2007, -53/+6Digg is not your personal army
      • birdadderley, on 10/10/2007, -6/+6Ninja... attack!!

        Address: 117a Veizman #2, Nahariya 22441, ISRAEL
        Phone: +972-4-9921731, +972-54-876933
        E-Mail: vadim@VadiAz.com
      • Mitchbones, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2this isn't /b/
      • bagelpirate, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Lets keep it that way
    • dinostabOMG, on 10/10/2007, -5/+68Wow, can't believe this is necessary:

      /sarcasm
      • dbr_onix, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26Nah, if people didn't recognize that as sarcasm, Digg would need to allow the blink HTML tags to get the message across.
        • sleepwalkers, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Oh God, the horror! THE HORROR!
    • EBFoxbat, on 10/10/2007, -4/+21"Vadim Smelyansky" that's hillarious I use Vladimir SmellYanksMe as a generic Soviet name all the time.
    • ronaldinho, on 10/10/2007, -11/+3just tell her to ditch hotmail for gmail for goodness sake.......gmail is infinite times better
    • ahawks, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1"Vadim Smelyansky" ....

      Not "SmellYanksMe" ... more like Smelly Ansky. I'm imagining "ansky" is russian for "anus". Smelly Anus.
      • theblindman2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Smeely whore means wonderful choir in Russian...
  • jmpeagle, on 10/10/2007, -25/+4he seems to be notorius at flouting minor laws
    http://www.robolo.co.il/7/04/09/14/Robolo_92328.asp
    • Myonosken, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Hmm...Posting a foreign site on an English site. Smart move.

      Also, who gives a *****?! The hacker obviously didn't. Some people would have baseball batted the prick when they found him so he seems pretty nice to me.
  • suxmonkey, on 10/10/2007, -15/+1Wouldn't you do the same ...?
  • whatthefu, on 10/10/2007, -11/+135That is one ***** ugly site layout.
    • eliburford, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10hmm which one?
    • theholycow, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2Why is it 50 characters wide? Why, on my 1200 pixel wide screen, is it 400 pixels wide? Who wants a content pane that's only 400 pixels wide, even on a lower resolution screen? Maybe it would be tolerable at 640x480.

      Between that and the length of his writing, I don't feel so bad about how verbose I can be.
      • theholycow, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1The diggers have spoken. I guess people enjoy scrolling down. Why are monitors so wide, then? They've always been wider than they are tall.

        You guys might want to invest in a monitor more useful for you:
        http://i16.tinypic.com/63j9kys.jpg
        That one is still wide enough for a few hundred pixels of sidebars and what not...
      • Smuikas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Actually, there is a very good reason for it to be narrow. 50 characters may be a /bit/ too narrow, but even so: one of the things you learn in professional typography and layout is that there is generally an "optimal line width" of about 12-14 words per line (about 78em). Any shorter than that and reading comprehension is lowered, as the reader pays less attention to the end of a line than the beginning. Any longer than that, and it becomes more difficult to find the beginning of the next line, often leading to the reader beginning to read the same line they just finished reading!

        While it is narrow on this layout, there is a very good reason for it. I would have preferred him to use a larger font size and wider content width, with his embedded scrollbox codes (scrolling with code in that narrow of a space is annoying as hell) expanding to be wider as needed.
    • psxman, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1A half-decent trick: disable CSS. This makes many sucky web designs tolerable. To do this in Firefox, you do something like View:Page Style:None.
      • Smuikas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Or get the venerable web developer toolbar and hit control-shift-s
      • drakenlot, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Or go View, Page Style, No Style.

        I win for quickness.
  • marcz, on 10/10/2007, -9/+38A taste of the hackers own medicine. I like it.
    • drunkendash, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Not really.
      The webmaster here only traced his attacker. The attacker was not attacked himself.
  • dave6179, on 10/10/2007, -50/+5Buried for being the rant of a nerd who didn't get any from the cheerleaders.
    • Murdats, on 10/10/2007, -3/+33oh no. you have pointed out this mans inadequacy as a human because you believe he wasnt sexually promiscuous enough.

      I am sure if he had the chance he would go back and pick up more sluts in order to better himself as a human and to contribute more to society, instead he is left with suicide as his only option. its a shame, he would have been a great guy if it werent for the fact that he didnt have enough sex.
      • Frnnkdlxx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4OH! HE SARCASTICALLY TORCHED YOUR ASS!
      • Alpione, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Clearly Murdats didn't get any either...
    • sleepwalkers, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1...huh?
  • wafflesomd, on 10/10/2007, -51/+12That's cool.

    Too bad bloggers gay, and no gives a ***** what they have to say.
    • Markpdotcom, on 10/10/2007, -1/+33Wow, Vanilla Ice posts on Digg!
    • ronaldinho, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3If you made a comment on it, that means you at least did give a ***** about it, dimwit
  • phillyjo, on 10/10/2007, -4/+45Looks like the hacker found this site.
    Site dead.
  • DirtySnachez, on 10/10/2007, -8/+144Server meltdown at 62 diggs.

    New Title : Hacker gets his own back by letting guy DDOS his own site.
    • jues, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12is funny, i like
    • shdwghst457, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9ah yes, the digg denial of service at work
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3no, not meltdown due to Digg, Dreamhost went down on whole network level, is it that normal for Dreamhost to go down regularly like this? in past i have suggested many to dreamhost.
      • rajulkabir, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Unfortunately, it is normal.
      • roastdawgg, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0in soviet russia you regularly go down on dreamhost! had to do it.
  • adamchristopher, on 10/10/2007, -10/+4If only our justice system was so simple.
  • delusr, on 10/10/2007, -6/+162Awesome now hes gonna track down every digg user for the current DDOS attack on his website.
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -12/+3Common... how did you get digged for that comment? the guy tracked down the issue instead of bitching google,wordpress and his web host. what has digg come to now with commentors like you?

      and his website did not go down due to Digg, Dreamhost went down on whole network level, is it that normal for Dreamhost to go down regularly like this? in past i have suggested many to dreamhost.
  • abouthere, on 10/10/2007, -10/+756 Diggs and not one mirror had chance to cache it before it went down. Looks like it's time someone read up on how easy it is to at least attempt to make your Wordpress install capable of showing your site to more than 3 people a day!
    • martyFREEDOM, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1it was his hosting database, probably on the same server his website is hosted
    • darkkosmos, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Looks like everyone can crash his site, not just a hacker
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Can all you commentor's read whole ***** before commenting

      Site did not go down due to Digg, Dreamhost went down on whole network level,
  • darkkosmos, on 10/10/2007, -18/+12So what? He tracked him down, but whats he gonna do lol! The hacker is still getting away with it and if he wanted to destroy his blog he will have already. Tracking him down didn't do anything, just a waste of time.
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -5/+4Common... how did you get digged for that comment? the guy tracked down the issue instead of bitching google,wordpress and his web host . what has digg come to now with commentors like you?
      • darkkosmos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Well this doesn't help him in anyway, it's just like bitching and moaning to wordpress they can't do anything but just tell you to use a better password. Anyway, if you give me your IP I can track you down to where you live too :)
  • jer2eydevil88, on 10/10/2007, -12/+15Lets see if it works
    http://www.duggmirror.com
  • r00tus3r, on 10/10/2007, -15/+2This dude better watch his back ... those guys aren't to be toyed with.
    • Rivetgeek, on 10/10/2007, -1/+17Dude...hes a nerd, not a sniper.
      • janemcopland, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3"Cause if there's one thing I know, it's that you never mess with Mother Nature, mother-in-laws, or mother-***** Ukrainians."
  • darkism, on 10/10/2007, -16/+6"SEO hacker" ? Since when are SEOs "hackers" ?
    SEMs the new "script kiddies" ? Replace "search engine marketers" with "spammers" and you might be on the right track.

    Blackhat tactics are decidedly uncool, but this guy sounds like a card-carrying dot communist who hates Internet advertising.
    Then again, I didn't get to read the article (down) so I could be completely wrong.
    • cdahlkvist, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2Oddly enough his site is plastered with Google Ads. He's just mad that he didn't know how to keep Wordpress and the gallery up to date and secure and thus, someone else made money off of his useless rants.
  • timelf123, on 10/10/2007, -16/+8BH SEO guys who know what they are doing are NOT to be ***** with. They can ruin your business online, trust me.
  • lynx77, on 10/10/2007, -12/+3looks like the hacker came back and finished him off - he who lasts loudest and all that...
  • Proctor, on 10/10/2007, -5/+22Websites Suck.
  • Damien79, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Digg DDOS or hackers on steriods which is worse?
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -4/+1everyone here just wants to comment without reading and anyone will get Digged up for any ***** comment.

      and his website did not go down due to Digg, Dreamhost went down on whole network level,

      Digg has to repair comment system.
  • arctic, on 10/10/2007, -14/+3Search Engine Optimization does not equate to Hacking, buried as inaccurate.
  • radu79, on 10/10/2007, -7/+6I am not sure how can he be sure this is the guy who hax0red him. It could be that the guy who wrote this tool is different than the one who used it (he might have sold it to a SEO, or made it for a SEO).
  • em22, on 10/10/2007, -10/+35Erm, I think you will find that Vadim Smelyansky is the fellow who wrote that tool, he is a systems engineer from Israel - http://www.linkedin.com/in/vadiaz

    I think you may have done a knee jerk reaction here... Not very smart until you are 100% sure with question of a doubt that you had the right person...

    Bloggers eh? Pretending they know what they're doing!
    • jaydj, on 10/10/2007, -9/+4And if you trace those two IPs that FTPd into his server they come from Brazil and Germany. The named servers appear in blocklists. I doubt he has the right guy and he should send emails to

      abuse@telesp.net.br and
      abuse@teleport-iabg.de

      with the information.
    • ufia, on 10/10/2007, -3/+20Note to self: Filling a bug report online may result in some angry juvenile bloggers posting your picture on the internets along with accusations that you hacked the Gibson.
      • GianDoe, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3bwhahaha the ***** Gibson...proper noun of course...
    • drunkendash, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4From his LinkedIn profile:
      "I am computer expert with more than 20 year of UNIX Systems/Networks/Applications administration experience.
      If you need something done, even something near to impossible, I am the address."

      Indeed, he is the address.
    • OsiVert, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Can someone explain how his tool allowed the hacking of the site? The blogger says it was most likely a vulnerability in his wordpress php, but how would that explain the entries in the ftp logs with his username being used? Would the php error allow him to gain access to the ftp program?
    • FreakTrap, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2@em22

      That was my first reaction to this, and I was hoping that as I read on, the blogger would provide further links between Vadmin and the 'hack job'. Unfortunately, that was not the case, for which reason I find it hard to support this blogger's course of action.

      I'd be willing to bet that the real hacker, if he read the latest blog entry, is laughing his ***** ass right now.
  • SnaKe09, on 10/10/2007, -10/+44who the ***** says "p0wned"
  • silenceHR, on 10/10/2007, -6/+5dugg ... so diggers can DDoS him
  • katanaswordfish, on 10/10/2007, -8/+27Follow up story: Attention-hungry blogger found dead of what appears to be exposure to the potent radioactive isotope Polonium 210...

    In other news: Russia changes its official name to: "Ru- seriously, we didn't it this time -ia"...
  • Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -2/+28There's a russian commercial web-site hacking software suite which, according to Symantec, can hack about half of all websites. It attacks, among other, vulnerabilities in php. I'd guess that's what this loser ***** Smelyansky was using to hack this guys site. It's too bad Russian authorities wont do anything about him even if this blogger reports him. Except possibly offer him a job.

    Personally I find it more interesting that so many morons here on Digg seem to support a script-kiddie like Smelyansky.
    • smacksaw, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Russian authorities? That's not who you talk to in Russia anymore.
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2Thanks Junkyaddawg, for that comment, put my faith back in Digg Comment community, everyone else is just talk from the place where_sun_don't_shine.
    • Smuikas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I wonder of CodeIgniter protects from these injections. It's supposedly got a rather robust injection-protection security layer, if you use it correctly.
  • sl33stak, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Freakin awesome! I love to see stories like that....made my day.
  • JakeCop, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4That guys wants to be careful, hackers can be very arsey.
  • mattfugitive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4Job well done sir! Pwned!
  • screwloose45, on 10/10/2007, -11/+15Buried for "p0wned".
  • nevetando, on 10/10/2007, -11/+5OKAY!!! seriously people.. enough with pwned... it is no longer cool, you are just a gay 12 year old now if you say it, or in this case, miss say it. Here is a hint, If South Park has mocked you for it, it has run it's course. that was a long time ago now.
    Lets all move on to some other cool keyboard jocky lingo we can all share and be L33t... aw ***** nevermind.
    • Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -4/+7Enough with the 'gay'. It's no longer cool. You're just a lame 12 year old now if you say it.
    • cdahlkvist, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2At least it's not as old as attaching the word "jockey" onto the end to make it sound uber dorky.

      Look, all this guy does is make comments on digg. He must be a Comment Jockey!"
    • ApocDozer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1So someone is homosexual if they use the word pwned? How does that make sense at all, I don't know why everyone uses gay/fag for the word *****,sucks etc...

      Use a better word! stop being so pregidous!
  • LoneThistle0, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10His email is vadim@VadiAz.com
    I wonder how he would feel if it was spammed to DEATH.
    • proliance, on 10/10/2007, -2/+8Do you really want to give this guy your email address?
      • cawpin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Are you an idiot? Wait, why am I even asking?
      • Quaterni0n, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Why give him your email address? Just subscribe him to a bunch of newsletters and free trial porn sites and he'll get spammed to death in no time.
    • SasquatchBill, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I think he would feel... dead?
  • UWake911, on 10/10/2007, -8/+6Was he a Russian Ashkenazi? The Russian Mafia is known to be Jewish and into net crime and white slave traffic of children into paedophilia and prostitution in Europe and Middle East.
    • Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Haha... That's propaganda. The russian mafia is ethnic russian. Google "oligarch". The biggest oligarch, the 'godfather' of the russian mafia, is Putin himself.
  • Treoinmypocket, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5What this guy should have done after finding Smelansky's (anybody else laugh at that name?) was to contact each of the former employers as well as the Israeli police, Interpol, the Ukrainian police and the FBI. Sending each a copy of this blog post and Smelansky's info.

    • Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3...after which the Russian military would have hired Smelyansky, if they haven't already, and had him attack banks and other targets in countries deemed hostile to Russia, e.g. Lithuania, Georgia, and Ukraine.
    • freebsdmike, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I bet interpol would just right on that.
  • siong1987, on 10/10/2007, -8/+1none of this would happen if ur web server was IIS 6.0.

    Please thumb me down.
    • Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1IIS is so bad that it's not even on the radar. I'm guessing most don't even know what it is. Let's keep it that way.
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+0how would script work in IIS, you are something with starts from R, figure it out now.
    • chrysb, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1No, instead your server would be attacked by all general worms and virii :)
    • binarybandit92, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1mmmmmmmk
  • harry07, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1After getting hacked... it's now the digg effect!
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2his website did not go down due to Digg, Dreamhost went down on whole network level,
  • ramaz, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14The above collection of comments appears to be sprinkled generously with verbage from Vadim himself, or his buddies, using pseudonyms and attempting to do damage control, as well as to inspire fear in the hearts of diggers about any effort to defend oneself. Vadim and those like him are simply sub-human.

    Justin Watts, I salute you!
    • Junkyarddawg, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9There's a definite possibility that Vadim is Nashi and/or employed by the russian government, both of which have strong presence here on Digg, and are known to use hackers, e.g. in the cyber-attack on Estonia.

      I checked the profiles of some of the guys who've defended him, and at least the accounts are not brand new. They may still belong to Vadim, maybe he's used Digg to game sites, but my guess is that the people who've rushed to his defence are Nashi and assorted script-kiddies.
    • anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1i think yes.
    • freebsdmike, on 10/10/2007, -4/+2Calling someone a scum bag and not even knowing the real story is kinda harsh. The guy you did this "investigation" really didn't do anything but make accusations based on faulty logic.
  • anchorman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6I enjoyed much of the story and the detective work the blogger did. However, it is possible... perhaps even likely that the real hacker used a different name in the forum posts to throw blame on someone other than himself. Just a thought.
  • kshakir, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14dugg mirror: http://www.duggmirror.com/security/Blogger_tracks_down_the_guy_who_hacked_him_publishes_his_name_and_photo/
  • Jams, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3What does fitis mean or translate as? Here is a russian chap going by that nick on searchengines.ru http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://forum.searchengines.ru/member.php%3Fu%3D2013&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=2&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dwww.fitis.ru%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26hs%3Dfe9%26sa%3DG
    • foreignwarren, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Good find! I wonder if anyone bothered to read the post on the blogger's site? the hacker used fitis.google.com to fool the guys site into thinking it was google bot. Maybe it's this guy, and not the guy he's blaming. As someone said above, it could be that the Vadim guy designed the software used or whatever (i'm no hacker...so hope my explanation is clear..). This would makes sense, because you might want your name present in your software somewhere if you're a programmer, but definitely not if you're hacking people's sites. Then again it could be a network of these guys working in tandem..so who knows. At any rate...good on the Justin kid.
    • foreignwarren, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1and it looks like someone keeps trying to digg you down........hmmmm.... maybe you should post again with a more in depth explanation so those not inclined to click on the link might consider what you submitted. I find it very strange that such a simple and seemingly innocuous question should be dugg down...suspicious indeed...maybe even gives your observation more credence in my mind!
  • hammerpants, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11Dude, your website is hideous. He was just putting it out of its misery.
  • atomicwedgie, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Web-marketing... the new SPAM. I came into the comments expecting to see DIGG'rs supporting this blogger and thrashing the scum that hacked his site. Instead I find a buttload of comments from some of the worst DIGG dregs more or less poking fun at him? WTF is wrong with some of you?
    • dansmeek, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0yeah wtf. i don't get this site anymore. the average user has gone from age 16 to age 12 it seems. this was a cool story and the best comment people can come up with is "wow what a ***** web page."
      to which i say "wow what a ***** comment"
  • Treason, on 10/10/2007, -8/+5In Soviet Russia...
    • Hindermore, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4Blog hack you!
    • kalsey, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1You could have atleast finished it.

      "In Soviet Russia, blog(ger) hacks you!"
  • Victorioso, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3Ha ! "Smelyansky" that's hilarious...go blogger-dude !
  • jazzjeff, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Serve the scumbag right!
  • russianmike, on 10/10/2007, -9/+0Quit being a whiny bitch. You're the who got pwned in the first place. Not only is that Vadim dude 1337 but he is also a samurai. I wouldn't ***** with that if I were you.
  • ChristBehemoth, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2got what he deserved ..
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