What's happened to Piccoloist.com???

pied_piper · Post by **pied_piper** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 8:05 pm

Anybody know what happened to the Piccoloist.com website?

This is all that it says:
The site is currently unavailable
Please contact your System Administrator

etgohomeok · Post by **etgohomeok** » Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:13 pm

Looks like they updated their web server:

http://shared3.ultrawhb.com/

piccoloist · Post by **piccoloist** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 7:07 am

I'm the owner of Piccoloist.com
What happened is that someone hacked into the site, and setup a fake paypal spoofing page. At this time they won't grant me access to move the site to another host, and they are completely slow in researching to see who actually did the damage.
I am still working on it, but can't give a date as to when we'll be back up.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

pied_piper · Post by **pied_piper** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:45 pm

Well, if that's the poor response you're getting from the host provider, you should definitely look into another provider to host your site. They should have had backups and been able to restore proper operation within 24-48 hours. If they're using the excuse that they are "researching" who hacked in, I'd say they're just giving you the runaround.

It would be more reasonable if they researched how the server was hacked to prevent it from happening again in the future.

If their system administrators had kept the servers updated with the latest security updates, it's less likely the servers would have been hacked in the first place. In the event the servers are compromised, the provider should have a plan in place to restore operation within the 24-48 hour timeframe I mentioned above. When you shop around for a new provider, be sure to ask them about their disaster recovery plan and how long they will take to restore normal operation in the event of a problem no matter whether it's hardware, software, or a security breach.

Anyway, I'll look forward to seeing piccoloist.com again in the near future.

etgohomeok · Post by **etgohomeok** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 11:56 am

All they have to do is check their Apache log files and look for the right IP address (easy because it's probably the last one to access the site before it went down).

Besides, unless it was poorly scripted, websites nowdays don't usually just get "hacked."

pied_piper · Post by **pied_piper** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 2:03 pm

etgohomeok wrote:All they have to do is check their Apache log files and look for the right IP address

MS IIS has a similar feature, but some of these dummies will turn off logging to save disk space so that they can sell it to another user - not too smart...

etgohomeok · Post by **etgohomeok** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 6:27 pm

pied_piper wrote:MS IIS has a similar feature, but some of these dummies will turn off logging to save disk space so that they can sell it to another user - not too smart...

Time for a new host?

piccoloist · Post by **piccoloist** » Tue Jul 22, 2008 8:09 pm

I will let you know when it goes back up, and yes, we are going with a different host.

piccoloist · Post by **piccoloist** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 2:15 pm

The site is back up and running!

pied_piper · Post by **pied_piper** » Sat Jul 26, 2008 5:02 pm

Glad you're back online!