Saving Country Music Back Up After Technical Meltdown/ Hacking Attempt

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As you might have noticed, for portions of Sunday morning (7-14), and for the majority of Monday (7-15), Saving Country Music has been completely unreachable. This was due to a series of unfortunate events that first took the website down, and then forced us to take the website down ourselves to prevent further issues after it was hacked by a malicious party.

The problems began Friday afternoon when a minor issue emerged on the back end of the website. As we were trying to resolve this issue, perhaps the solution became worse than the problem, and it resulted in extremely slow load times, and sometimes the website not loading at all. To add insult to injury, while this was occurring, the company that hosts Saving Country Music on its servers decided it had enough, and served notice that Saving Country Music needed to find another place to live.

This would basically be like getting a Cancer diagnosis, and then on the same day, having your spouse tell you that they’re leaving you. I was fired as a customer so to speak, while the site was unreachable and suffering catastrophic errors. The current host did continue to help resolve the technical issues (however slowly), and is currently allowing Saving Country Music to stay, for the moment.

When we finally resolved the initial technical issue and were working to fortify the website, it was then taken over by hackers. In the going on 17 years of Saving Country Music, it has never been hacked. In fact, further protocols have been put in place since the cyberattack in late May to make sure similar things don’t happen again. Whether the hackers took advantage of some weakness that came up while the site was being worked on or it was completely unrelated, we lost control of the website, and I received what was basically a ransom letter Monday morning.

Luckily, both the hosting company and my tech team were able to gain back control the website without any money changing hands, or demands having to be met. However, I have lost another day of ad revenue, productivity, etc., and right as I have been putting in 18 hours days covering Under The Big Sky Fest in Whitefish, Montana.

For the record, there is no reason to believe at this moment that the hack was a targeted attack. It very well could have been and we’re investigating this. But unlike May’s DDoS attack that was targeted at an article about Morgan Wallen, there was no “target” here. There is a chance a hacker just saw a quick moment to take advantage, and pounced. Or perhaps not. Make no mistake about it, there are people dedicated to seeing this website disappear.

Ever since the cyberattack in late May, some users have continued to complain about access issues with the site or slow load times. What I can tell you is that all of this stuff will continue to be actively worked on. However, there is a good chance that this wave of catastrophic technical difficulties with the website are going to result in some major changes moving forward. Long story short, Saving Country Music is a very small, mostly one-man operation with low overhead that at times draws massive, massive amounts of traffic, creating unique problems. The current setup is going to be unsustainable moving forward.

The good news is the site is currently up and the “all clear” has been sounded, for now. But expect a host of “house cleaning” articles about Saving Country Music in the coming days and weeks as I revamp my approach and tie up some loose ends about some of the drama over the last few days, including being detained and kicked out of the Billy Strings concert at Under The Big Sky Fest Sunday evening. Hopefully, all of these upcoming changes will be for a more positive, productive, and sustainable future.

Thanks as always for reading, for your patience from trying to access the website over the last couple of days, and all the drama. Sunday was both one of the worst days of my life, and one of the best as I saw some of the most amazing musical collaborations I have ever witnessed. I look forward to sharing all of that stuff with you, some of which can now be seen on Instagram.

Onward and upward.

–Kyle “Trigger” Coroneos

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