Scoble Admits Incompetence Yet Blames WordPress
I thought I was done making fun of the naive yesterday, who couldn’t understand the simple premise of “Upgrade Now” to protect their self hosted WordPress install, but it would appear that the weekend is not yet over in that respect.
Robert Scoble should know better than most the necessity for security updates. He was Microsofts blogger evangelist for long enough, yet now that he’s self hosting his own blog he’s apparently forgotten what he once used to preach.
At some point in the last few weeks (not months, weeks) Scobles WordPress install was hacked and now that there is a big hullabaloo about making sure people update to 2.8.4. He’s decided to jump on the bandwagon and tell his story.
Normally I would have no problem with A-list bloggers like Scoble sharing their story and promoting the need to keep your installs up-to-date, but if I were working or developing for/at/on WordPress I would be incredibly pissed off at Scoble right now.
Not only should people directly involved with WordPress be annoyed at Scoble right now, but anybody who develops for clients and promotes the WordPress platform.
In a post titled “I don’t feel safe with WordPress, hackers broke in and took things” Scoble tells the story about how the blog he neglected to upgrade from 2.7.X (despite all the security updates released between 2.7 and 2.8.4, the notifications of new releases in the dashboard, internet wide talk every time a new release gets pushed etc…) and how he got hacked as a consequence.
Do you see now why Matt Mullenweg and all WordPress developers should be up in arms against Scoble?
In his post and the comments, Scoble repeatedly states that he neglected to upgrade, (despite that fact that it’s a one click process) yet the title of his post, which is what most people pay attention to and probably the only thing that people skimming their RSS readers or Twitter will see, clearly lays the blame at the feet of WordPress.
Scoble just took a big swipe at the perceived security of WordPress. A big unjustified swipe, that serves only to bring him traffic as he jumps on the bandwagon of the push to get people to update to the current version on WordPress, while deflecting attention away from the fact that the only reason it happened to him was because he failed to update.
That’s very much like complaining that you’ve been hacked because you failed to install all the critical updates on your operating system.
Bad form Robert.
As a tech blogger and a geek Robert should know better, on all accounts.
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I agree Scoble should have known better. However, the frequency of security patches from Wordpress makes it bloody annoying to manage multiple installs of WP. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the updates are not important or urgent – just that they're annoying.
I agree with you, but I'd rather they ship them as quickly as they do instead of waiting and running risks