Securing a MySQL Database

[chestertb]

Hi,

My site uses a mysql database.
I "subscribed" to the newsletter on my site tonight using an email address from a domain that isn't active. Within about 3 hours, I got spam addressed to info @the domain... which strikes me as a little too co-incidental.

There are two possibilities...
1) Someone external has access to the mysql db on my site. If this is the case, can anyone suggest how I might secure it?

or

2) There is spyware on my machine that is eluding spybot s&d. If this is the case, can anyone suggest an alternative?

Thanks
CTB

[buntine]

A simple way of securing your database is by granting permissions only to certain users by use of the GRANT keyword.

The overall process is a bit too much to bother posting here, so i will point you to some documentation i found.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/GRANT.html
http://www.bugzilla.org/docs214/html/granttables.html
http://www.devshed.com/c/a/MySQL/The-MySQL-Grant-Tables

Regards,
Andrew Buntine.

[akadis]

if its #2 then maybe check out Lavasoft AdAware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/) i find it tends to catch things Spybot doesnt and vise virsa