What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Under attack

    Some people will have noticed that some of the websites that I look after have been under attack this week. Naughty people are trying to gain control of a load of web servers and mine has been one of the many targeted.

    What has been happening is that someone has had the great idea of trying to crack as many WordPress sites using a brute force attack. That means setting computers up to try to log in to a site automatically using a computer program to try as many different password combinations as possible. The same technique was a feature in the film War Games of some years ago – the computer in question being the one which controlled US Missiles. My computers have slightly less power.

    People do this to gain control of servers so they can do naughty things like use them to send out lots of spam all at once. (Ever wondered where it came from?)

    The consequence for my readers this week is that at some times, my websites have been showing up in various security systems (Norton, AVG) as infected and this meant that people couldn’t get access to the sites whilst this protection was in use.

    I think I’ve nipped it all in the bud.

    For anyone experiencing the same trouble, here’s some of what you can do to help.

    • Change the password combination on your server.
    • Change the password combination on your blog/WordPress installation.
    • Install a plugin like Anti-Malware and use it to scan and remove malicious code that has been injected into your site.
    • Install a plugin like Better WP Security and word through what it recommends. At the very least, make sure you don’t have your administrator account in the name “admin” and use the plugin to lock down your login screen – you can set it to ban an incoming IP address after 10 failed attempts to log in, for example.
    • Don’t panic.

    For anyone who isn’t having the same trouble, consider doing the security things anyway.

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72 responses to “Baptism and the Churches”

  1. Erika Baker Avatar
    Erika Baker

    Thanks Kelvin and all for the interesting discussion. As a member of the Episcopal Church in the US, I only ever used the Baptismal Covenant in an argument against the necessity of the proposed Anglican Covenant. For me, the Baptismal Covenant is an assent to the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, so I saw absolutely no need of another covenant. In fact, I don’t see the Baptismal Covenant as something different from the New Covenant.

    With respect to whether Baptism or the Eucharist is a/the sacrament of initiation, wouldn’t the answer be both? In the early church, the person was baptized and received the Eucharist during the same service.

    Also, I wonder if people from other Anglican churches are aware of the great diversity of views held by Episcopalians in the US. That all the orders of ministry should be open to all the baptized seems to me simply a matter of the justice and equality that all Christians should strive for as members of the Body of Christ.

    Reply
  2. Erika Baker Avatar
    Erika Baker

    Sorry, I’m posting on Erika’s computer, but the comment above is by me, June Butler (aka Grandmère Mimi).

    Reply
  3. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    It’s so refreshing to read a discussion where everyone’s listening and learning through that dialectical process. Here’s my tuppennyworth: the disparaging mention of magic by churchpeople always makes my hackles go up – mostly as our Christian legacy of persecution of wise healers as witches is still largely unacknowledged and certainly unatoned – but also because the RC in me hears this as a facile Protestant jibe against metaphysics (if you want my views on that buzzword look here: http://robertpirsig.org/Alchemy.htm ) and though Vat 2 officially u-turned on slavery (yay! who says the RC church can’t change, eventually) it didn’t move away from an essentially sacramental view of Christian ministry.
    I feel that underlying this discussion may be a difference in sacramental theology. I hold the traditional view that through the creation, the incarnation and ongoing sanctification, the Spirit of God is at work metaphysically in the world and that means neither solely spiritually nor physically but betwixt and between. The RC church is just as guilty of virulent hatred of non-clerical women healers as others but the convivial nature of the relationship which sometimes occurs between Roman Catholic and ‘curandero’ (wise traditional healer) in Latin America is for me an affirmation of the ecological connections inherent in both cosmologies – though often forgotten in the RC church it must be said.
    The part of the SEC liturgy I find most alienating is ‘Lord unite us in this sign’. This speaks to me of cognition not communion. In these words I feel the lack of belief in a metaphysical reality. I feel that this discussion may have brought up a similar divide in concept about baptism: is it or is it not efficacious?

    Reply

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