Recently discovered bug means most or all Drupal sites have been compromised

Drupal is an open source content management system and more that powers millions of websites worldwide. Liked for its configurability and endless extension through modules, Drupal is a huge part of Web 2.0. And it's been thoroughly rooted. The BBC is reporting:

In its "highly critical" announcement, Drupal's security team said anyone who did not take action within seven hours of the bug being discovered on 15 October should "should proceed under the assumption" that their site was compromised. Anyone who had not yet updated should do so immediately, it warned. However, the team added, simply applying this update might not remove any back doors that attackers have managed to insert after they got access. Sites should begin investigations to see if attackers had got away with data, said the warning.

"Attackers may have copied all data out of your site and could use it maliciously," said the notice. "There may be no trace of the attack." It also provided a link to advice that would help sites recover from being compromised.

This one is nasty. Security researcher Graham Cluly reports:

According to the company, "automated attacks" started to hit websites running Drupal version 7 within a matter of hours of it disclosing a highly critical SQL injection vulnerability on October 15th.

Automated attacks began compromising Drupal 7 websites that were not patched or updated to Drupal 7.32 within hours of the announcement of SA-CORE-2014-005 - Drupal core - SQL injection. You should proceed under the assumption that every Drupal 7 website was compromised unless updated or patched before Oct 15th, 11pm UTC, that is 7 hours after the announcement.

If a site using a vulnerable version of the Drupal CMS is attacked, hackers could steal information from the site or open backdoors to allow them continued remote access to the system.

If your site has been compromised, This Drupal help page gives you an answer to the question Now what do I do? But here's a tip from your friendly editor zafiro17: Step one is "pour yourself a nice glass of scotch and drink it. You're going to be wiping the site and starting over." No charge for that advice.

[Ed. note: This just in from Joomla: "Nyah nyah!"]