Denesh Bhabuta, the Cyberstrider CEO commented on this log last night at 22:00
"As you are aware, the Cyberstrider web site is now back up and running (with an announcement on the front page informing clients of our twitter page where any updates will be posted),..."
However, depending on where you try to connect from, you may get either the Cyberstrider front page, or a Network Solutions Holding page. This seems to depend on name resolution. From my office, I get the network solutions holding page; from my phone I get the cyberstrider home page. From a client site, I was getting cyberstrider but now I get Network solutions. This implies to me that the DNS resolution had changed as in working its way through the system.
"The issue is to do with the main hosting platform which had been hacked and we have been working on fixing this 24/7. The suspicious activity started on Thursday last week and although the server had been back up in between quite a few times, you probably did not notice."
The fact that it has taken over a week to resolve this doesn't inspire confidence in Cyberstrider's ability to maintain a service. The latest twitter feed is "still working on a fix". I have to say I am not hopeful.
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Great Blog! I knew someone somewhere would get something going. Being down for a whole entire week is not very good at all. If only I could re-direct my domain name somewhere else while they sort it out then I wouldn't be too upset. But a whole weeks worth of visitors down the pan is rubbish!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe issue is a lot more sensitive than may appear and I am unfortunately unable to talk about it right now. However once things have settled, all clients can be assured of an open comment as to what actually happened and what we have done to bring things back and what things have been put into place to prevent this happening again.
ReplyDeleteSuffice to say that Aexiomus has been in the large network hosting business for 8 years now and the Internet services expertise within the company goes back to the late 80s.
I just told them they should get on the forum and explain what's going on as a lack of info will make people leave. They said this: "We will definitely be back.
ReplyDeleteThere is a balance to be struck... and getting onto forums rather than attending to the fix and the important issues will mean the fix will take longer. Conversely, lack of being on the forums because we are concentrating on the important things makes it seem as we do not care.. but we do."
I have been with Cyberstrider for over a decade - they have hosted many domains with email, with almost completely uninterrupted service in all that time.
ReplyDeleteCustomer service is usually there - always, even weekends.
Any previous problems have been fleeting.
Denesh is easy to find.
I am also losing business over this, but I want them to fix it pronto, the twitter is fine, if overdue.
very interesting
ReplyDeleteClearly you only want comments that bash cyberstrider.
Not any that have a balance to them.
Two hours and you have not put up a supportive comment.
I've been with Cyberstrider/Cybes/10quid.co.uk for about a decade too. But I can't afford for my site to vanish for a week when I'm currently running press advertising pushing people there.
ReplyDeleteIt's cost me about £50 to source new hosting and pay Nominet to transfer my domain to the new hosts, as well as a day of my time setting everything back up again, but it's worth it to know this time I have a host who has a published freephone support number with someone on the end of it.
Bye Cyberstrider…
I can understand your sentiments, I have lost A LOT too, serious money and its going to take a time to sort out.
ReplyDeleteBut then I don't know anyone who has not had a GREAT deal more trouble than I have had over the past 13 or more years online.
A freephone number gets you nowhere if the service crashes two or three times a year, and the thing is overloaded.
I wish you luck, I am not sure yet that one major attack on a company by a hacker with intent means that the services of the whole company should be thrown away that easily.
Just wanted to make it clear that the services of the whole company have not gone down. This has affected one server - the main shared hosting server. All our other services (IP Transit, colo, ADSL, VoIP), servers and network are running flawlessly.
ReplyDeleteThe hacker certainly seemed to have intent.
Please also put this in context of the reliability of our services since we started offering them. This has been a big attack on our systems and we are still investigating the issues and talking to legal bods as we have an inkling of who did this. At the same time, recovery attempts continue and we are also providing a short term solution with mail redirection for those customers affected by this.
In any case, you may email us directly on provisioning@cyberstrider.net, although our twitter feed will be kept up to date with the latest news.
It sounds like someone inside 'hacked' the account.
ReplyDelete"Internal security audit has led to data recovery project being reassigned."
They might have had 8+ years in the hosting business but they certainly didn't have an effective disaster/hacking recovery plan.
Although you get what you pay for! (Hey, they might credit you the £3:00)
I was of the opinion that I'd ride it out and hopefully all would be well again soon. However, it's been over a week and still no sign of getting my website back. Obviously I can't go without a website forever. I've emailed them this morning and haven't had a response. How long should we leave it before jumping ship?!?
ReplyDeleteI've now had a response and, although my site is not back, they have redirected my domain name to go to my back-up site so my users are not effected. Proof they are busy resolving the issues.
ReplyDeleteHow did you set up a back up site?
ReplyDeleteJust thought I'd list the problems I've had over the 9 years I've been using them. I was on the old £10 a year package via 10quid.co.uk before being forced to upgrade...
ReplyDelete1) They failed to renew my domain, resulting in an email demand from nominet, and then ignored my emails for days.
It was eventually sorted, but no apology was received.
2) The stats for my website have never worked (reported on multiple occasions, but never fixed) so I never had an easy way of keeping track of my usage, resulting in...
3) They attempted to charge me £120 + VAT for going 15meg over my 20meg disk space allowance (this is a £10 a year service!), and gave me 24 hours to pay or upgrade (to a business account costing £100's) in an email sent on Saturday morning!
I ended up going to their basic mail and web forwarding package and wasting a whole weekend.
Strange that this happened just after they stopped offering the 10quid.co.uk service to new customers. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
4) Outdated versions of PHP with limited library support. This was resolved by migrating my account to a new server resulting in...
5) They didn't migrate my mail forwarding rules correctly (they didn't migrate the default "catch all"), resulting in bounced emails and several forums locking my account because of this. Again no apology was received.
6) Multiple occasions when my domain vanished for hours at a time with no explanation.
I know this is over 9 years, and all issues were resolved, but it did need a lot of chasing every time something went wrong an the lack of apology is inexcusable.
Phil
A problem every 1.5 years, not bad really.
ReplyDeleteGoing 15meg over a 20meg limit, that is a BIG (75%) over usage. Personally I would expect a big charge.
You get what you pay for you can't expect too much out of a £10 service.
Though I expect a lot more out of the new service. Lack of communication does seem to be their biggest let down.
Though the few problems I have had I have always had answers back to emails reasonably quickly.
I am waiting to see what the future holds and the explanation at the end before deciding if it is time to move.
Adrian
Well I had an interesting phone call last night.
ReplyDeleteDenesh phoned me to explain what had happened.
I won't repeat all the details as I got the feeling a lot of it was speculation, however they were attacked from within the company and all records, databases and backups were destroyed!
At one point they had no record of who their customers were, let alone how to contact them!
He was very apologetic about the whole thing and said they'd learned a lot of lessons. I'm sure they've probably lost a lot of customers too.
He also admitted that their 10quid.co.uk service had been losing money, which probably explains why they were pushing people off it using whatever excuse they could find.
Anyway, I'm sure more details will come out eventually.
Phil
Just wanted to clarify something...
ReplyDelete10Quid was provided by a different company to the current company I am involved with - Aexiomus Limited T/A Cyberstrider
I was involved with 10Quid before is shut down it's doors.. at £10 per annum which included the domain name, the hosting, the service maintenance, the staff, the housing of the kit, the ever increasing price of power, and the ever increasing costs.. it is easy to see how 10Quid could not survive as the price of the service never changed since 1999. In addition it is not a simple case of adding an extra TB drive for £70 or so and that is it, there are many other costs involved in running a company that need to be covered.
Rather than just switch off all 10Quid customers due to the service shutting down, Aexiomus Limited offered to take on the 10Quid customers at no cost to the end user, until their 10Quid contract expiry date. Customers were offered to either stay on the 10Quid service or to move to one of Aexiomus's own accounts... and the Aexiomus pricing is done with sustainability in mind.. so that the errors in pricing made by 10Quid (with hindsight) did not occur.
For those that say they were forced into signing up to a new service... it needs to be taken into context. Those affected were mainly ones who were overusing their 10Quid resources by a large amount over and above their allocated amount. They were thus given the option to either pay the overusage fee or if they wanted, to transfer over to Aexiomus.. and by doing the latter they saved much more by not paying overusage fees... the overusage fees were always openly published on the 10Quid website.
I am all for openness and transparency... this is how I have always run any business I have been involved with, however the openness and transparency needs to run both ways. :-)
I'm not contesting the details, just the way the situation was handled.
ReplyDeleteYou emailed me on a Saturday lunch (13th September 2008 13:33) and gave me 24 hours to either...
1) Pay you £120 + VAT
2) Upgrade to a business account
If I didn't respond in time, you would suspend my account and charge me £250+VAT + £120+VAT to reactivate it!
In the end you agreed to let me move to your basic mail forwarding service but called me "cheeky" for picking the cheapest service!
Phil