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Comment by zacharypinter | Hacker News Reader

Looks like a PHP site. I'm guessing they weren't using version control and were instead just editing the files over FTP.

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If that turns out to be the case .. I wouldn't go so far as to say they deserved it, but my sympathy would definitely be pretty limited.

I agree. There is absolutely no excuse for not having some sort of source control and deployment system in place at an organization with a commercially deployed solution. Why would anyone regard such a system as optional? It is irresponsible.

so php == ignorance? are we really going to make that assumption? thats just foolish.

Not at all. Just trying to figure out how they might have a dev environment setup where there isn't a copy on local developer machines. Not all languages make that easy. PHP does.

ok, i get your point now.

They may have been using version control, but if they were checking out to a server and editing remotely, and that server happened to be the same server where the central repo was stored, it could explain how one attack would get it all.

No, but PHP easily allows a "edit source on server" as a deployment model.

Seriously, You dont even need a security attack for losing the changes with this model. A nice little "harddisk" failure would do the trick for you. :)

No, but given how often I've seen PHP developers do this, even at larger organizations, it's a plausible explanation.

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