Which is why I freaked out a little when I received this message in my Facebook stream. Then I followed through to some of hte other posts on the subject and realized that this was the self-same bug that had been identified Auguest 12 and patched with Wordpress version 2.8.4.

We Mad Scientists are a competitive bunch. We don’t like other Mad Scientists hacking into our stuff and messing with it, so as a rule, we apply security patches as soon as we are aware of them! If you or your agency is a maintained client of Mad Science Department, you probably have little to worry about. If you do see a “security upgrade” warning in your admin panel, it’s probably a good idea to let us know, but nine times out of ten, we’re already upgrading all the installations we maintain.

This kind of attack brings up other issues as well. It’s important to make sure that you are backing up your databases and file system regularly, so that you don’t lose too much in the event of a successful attack. Your host may even provide tools to automate this on a cPanel. If you are a user (not a developer) handling your own Wordpress installation, be vigilant and make sure you update as needed! Those warnings and messages in the backend are there for a reason! If you have a developer helping you, they’ll know the difference between feature updates (nice to have, but sometimes buggy) and critical security updates. Don’t be afraid to ask how necessary a given update is!

However, when handling an error apparently caused by a bad mc.getURL() request, I found myself wanting AS3. Strict coding and class structures prevent these kinds of errors, throwing exceptions if they occur. While I was trying to figure out why this error is occurring (seems only to happen with the DoubleClick system, on my local tests, everything works fine) I searched for information about the proper form for the request, and found an article with information about the AS3 call. One response to the article, dripping with sarcasm, caught my eye:

I like how it went from a simple code to a huge retared[sic] paragraph of programing…

Nice job Adobe!

Now, the designer in me (yes, I hold a degree in Graphic Design. I use it more than I care to admit, even though I spend most of my day looking at a screen reminiscent of the Matrix.) would have agreed. Neat, simple code behind my flash, that’s what I want. Not a big old try…catch block with exceptions! But the developer in me sees the wisdom here. If this ad had been done in AS3, I’d have a clear explanation of what was going wrong long before I sent it off to the publisher.

Generally speaking, newer specs are improvements, even if they do mean longer code and *gasp* more learning! (Okay, the whole XHTML/HMTL5 debate will have to wait for another day. There are exceptions to every good rule!)