Web Hosting Company Hacked; Up to 14 Million Affected

Nothing really comes for free and sometimes we have to be reminded that we get what we pay for, or don’t pay for. Especially if you were using the free webhosting service 000webhost for your web site. The Lithuanian company announced that an unpatched server allowed a hacker to get into the network and steal information from its users. The numbers being reported are between 13.5 and 14 million. Information taken included passwords, which were stored in plain text, usernames, email address and real names.

All of those using the company are advised to immediately change passwords, especially if the same one is used on multiple sites. When doing so, make sure they are strong. They should contain the following at a minimum:

• At least eight characters
• Lower and upper case letters
• One or more numbers
• One or more special characters

In addition, they should never contain personal details of any one and should not include actual words. Often, when passwords are stolen, the thieves will attempt to use them across multiple sites. So, it is best not to reuse passwords.

Keeping track of all the passwords needed in a day can be difficult on its own, so the idea of a separate one for every online account can be overwhelming. However, it’s important to do it and certainly for any site that contains confidential data such as your financial information, healthcare details, or social security number.

Don’t despair. Jim Stickley of Stickley on Security has a tip for creating separate unique passwords. He says to use a common six character-based password and change it in the same way for each online site.

For example, use “Yi127!” for your base and for each site, use some combination of that site’s characters to create a unique one. If you were using eTrade, you could use the first and second letters to bookend your base password and create “eYi127!T” or you could create “GoYi127!”  from Google’s first two characters. This way, they are much less likely to be repeated.

Another lesson from this is to keep your computers and devices updated with the latest patches and updates. This could be for the operating system, the firmware, and all software and apps that you may use.  000webhost didn’t fix a PHP based server and it was exploited. In addition to stealing the information of the company’s users, the information was also dumped online.

000webhost has stated that all the malicious uploads have been removed, it has reset passwords for all customers, increased encryption, and that customer sites would remain active while they investigate. However, it also said that in order to protect users, they “temporarily blocked all access to systems affected by this security flaw” and that access to the infected systems would be restored after all the security issues have been resolved. So, it really isn’t known if the customer websites are available or not.

Sister companies, Hosting24 and Hostinger, which are believed to be hosted in Cyprus are supposedly not affected by this incident.