Major hack-attack at Vaserv

Hackers attacked Vaserv.com, a UK web hosting provider, late on Sunday evening deleting data from as many as 100,000 websites.

According to the website of the ISP, the company is trying to restore as much data as possible and the webpage shows the continuing index log of updates to allow affected customers to see if their data is in the process of being restored.

The hackers are suspected to have hacked into the web host system via a virtualization application with a security hole, using version 2.0.7992 of HyperVM.

Vaserv lost about half of the data and websites that they host as a result of the attack and the hacker’s recursive deleting of files using UNIX commands once they were able to access the system.

Out of the half who lost their data, about half will never see it again, as even though Vaserv is attempting to restore data, these customers chose not to pay extra for data backup.

Rus Foster, the director of Vaserv, stated that others have also been affected and that Vaserv was not the only victim, even though they are currently receiving the highest publicity for the cyber attack.

The Register repot however says that it is not yet clear if other web hosts who also used the HyperVM application have been attacked or not.

In a matter unrelated to the virus, but still related to LXLabs which runs the HyperVM application that enabled the hackers into the Vaserv system, the founder of LxLabs was found dead of an apparent suicide by hanging.

While the hackers and the suicide of KT Ligesh are not immediately related, before the death there were reports of holes in LxLabs web hosting platform Kloxo and reports of other hijacked websties from those that used Kloko and HypeVM.

The recent events should inspire uses of either web hotsing platform to closely monitor their servers for irregularities and to take precautionary actions against future cyber attacks.

Tags: hackers, HyperVM, UNIX commands, Vaserv.com

Category: Webhosting News