Wow…. What happened on this year? Two big ASP.NET hosting providers hit by ransomware. In the past April, A2 Hosting had this issue and until now, they are unable to recover and still don’t offer their Windows Hosting plan.
Now, it turns to SmarterASP, one of the famous ASP.NET hosting provider. Actually SmarterASP new name on this business, it is around 2014, and grow very fast. We believe that they are very ambitious, they are unable to handle their clients or their server, this is a loophole for hackers to try to attack their security system.
We check that this attack happened on Saturday (Nov 16′ 2019), the attack encrypted customer data and the company’s website was not reachable too, it was up again earlier this morning.
The company confirmed this incident via their email and the following is the emails that we got from one of their customers:
“Your hosting account was under attack and hackers have encrypted all your data. We are now working with security experts to try to decrypt your data and also to make sure this would never happen again. Please stay tune
for more info. Please know that we are getting thousands of messages in our email and live chat and we don’t have enough staffs
to reply them all.” reads a statement published on the company website. “We will continue to put out notices on our Facebook page and http://status.smarterasp.net/ page, Please check back soon.”
On the support page, you could find the following text:
” Your hosting account was under attack and hackers have encrypted all your data, We are now working with security experts to try to decrypt your data and also to make sure this would never happen again.“
Clients Start Screaming
Server recovery efforts are going slow. Many customers nevertheless you should not have obtain their accounts and knowledge. People who do say their data is however encrypted, which includes web-site documents but also backend databases.
We check their Twitter timeline and we found many complaints about this issue. The following is few screenshots that we found:
Time to Move On
Honestly, no one want this bad things happened. But, if you already have your backup files and database, it is time to find new hosting provider, you can’t rely on this provider anymore. If they are able to recover, maybe this ransomware can happened again in the next few months or years, like A2 hosting. We never know. But, it is time to PRAY that they are able to recover soon so customers can take their files and databases.
Final Verdict
We know price is really important to choose ASP.NET hosting provider, but it is more important we can count on this provider, how reliable they are, how is their backup, how is their security. As we can see that 2 big ASP.NET hosting provider going downhill because security issue. We see that their price is bit cheaper, but have you ever think about how they manage their security? They try to catch all ‘fish’ here but they are overwhelmed to maintain their system. Moreover like SmarterASP that offer 2 months free trial, this really ‘eye catching’, how can they survive if they give you free service?
With this 2 big incident, we really learn that it is more important to find reputable hosting provider that not only try to catch any customers, but also they are able to maintain their security system.
