Web Hosting Forum

[www.T35.com - Free Web Hostingwww.AlexMelen.com - About Me]

We at T35 Hosting don't offer dedicated servers, but we know a few customers who have outgrown the shared hosting and have moved on to companies like layeredtech for their dedicated hosting needs. So I just wanted to give a heads to everyone about a hacking incident they had a few days ago:

Dear Valued Client,
Protecting our client’s account information is a top priority, and we value the trust you place in Layered Technologies. Regrettably, criminals are increasingly using the Internet for illegitimate purposes. As is the case with many companies that maintain databases of information, Layered Technologies is from time to time subject to attempts to illegally extract information from its databases.

The Layered Technologies support database was a target of malicious activity on the evening of 9/17/2007 that may have involved the illegal downloading of information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and server login details for 5 to 6,000 of our clients. Layered Technologies responded immediately to this specific incident by conducting a comprehensive security audit of internal processes and procedures.
Due to the significant amount of uncertainty in determining which accounts may have been impacted, Layered Technologies felt that it was in your best interest to take the precautionary steps of reaching out to you and all clients regarding this issue. In addition, we are asking all of our clients to change the login credentials for all host details they have submitted in the past 2 years. This includes any login credentials for the following: Cerberus, Modernbill, Encompass, and all servers you own and operate with LT, all services that may have submitted passwords in the past for such as Webmail, Remote Desktop, SSH, MySQL, cPanel WHM, FTP Backup storage or similar services. Please utilize the ‘reset password’ features on all of our tools to reset and send a new random password. Any LT customers needing assistance with resetting passwords should contact our technical support team via our ticketing system for methods for how we can assist with resetting them and not providing the updated passwords in the tickets.
We are committed to maintaining an ongoing dialogue with all of our clients about Internet security and the steps Layered Technologies is taking to protect its clients. LT has launched a series of initiatives to enhance and to protect the information you have entrusted to us. Some of these steps are being immediately implemented, while others will be put into place as appropriate.

We believe these actions are the responsible steps to protect the trust you place in LT. We will continue to share information with you about the enhancements we are making.

Sincerely,


Todd Abrams
President and COO
Layered Technologies Inc.

[Daniel White,T35 Head Forum AdministratorFree Flash Arcade Games | Arcade Blog]

It seems as if the internet criminals are getting smarter and smarter by the day.

Which is a valid point, considering the Pentagon was hacked this year and some non-critical information was stolen from their crazy high encrypted computers.

I am planning to get a dedicated hosting. I think the best thing is to deal with providers that guarantee periodical update and data backup. it may be costly but data loss may cost more...

Here I think it's to deal with staff choice which is critical to avoid such incidents, especially when company is providing ecommerce websites (and the information they store such as CC information).

I personally deal with a company which HQ is near, and that I know the manager. I can't rely on distant provider. Sometimes such incidents happen even with the most reknown service providers.

Hacking is becoming more problematic, although there are other risks now. There is this one web host in Chicago that got its servers stolen several times. Although some people think that was probably insurance fraud.

Yeah, hacking is a big problem for web hosts, especially free ones.  The hackers are getting smarter, and software developers are working to get their software more secure so they can take a stand against the hackers. 

I have heard of many normal web sites that have gotten hacked as well; always good to look out for any suspicious IP's. 

[Daniel White,T35 Head Forum AdministratorFree Flash Arcade Games | Arcade Blog]

As alot of United States based companies, it is extremely hard to prosecute alot of these hackers, because they hail from a different country. This means they can do whatever they want to US based servers and get away with it, as we don't have jurisdiction against outside US attacks.

I believe this should be somewhat looked into by the US government, to the part where we can have a small jurisdiction to prosecute outside US hackers.

I think, it is better to own a server. It is more flexible and with time it will become less expensive to maintain. I mean, less expensive if optimised properly. This will allow you to run server intensive processes. These processes in shared environment kills the whole server, and loads of people suffer.

Security is a major issue nowadays. The PS3 is becoming "fearable". Alongside with linux, it has a great hacking potential. Protecting ourselves in many ways is the only thing we can think of.

Damn, that must suck, lets just hope LayeredTech can learn from this, and make their company/servers even more secure

All in all the threat of hacking will always be with us, that battle against the hackers will always continue, the more software developes, the more do hackers attempts to destroy them.

its a shame that hackers from outside countries cannot be prosecuted for hacking attempts, i for one have almost been hacked a few times, after checking the IP's i found that the most common place of hackers from my attacks was in turkey...which is rather worrying.

Dedicated hosting poses the problem as hackers can get into easily on knowing IP n few other information unless u have some security softwares installed. Also many webhosts are resellers of layeredtech who ahve good number of servers.

I think Hackers will be as long as technologies will be coming.
There must be cyber crime acts in each and every country. You can't do anything if in hacker's country there is no rule, nobody is responsible though.

ICANN or other authorities should take some actions about the hacking in each and every countries having Internet. This is the only solutions as per as countries are concerned.