Time to rebuild my host spread

**wswd** · April 29th, 2012, 03:13

Originally Posted by Tyler

I'm so/so on this. It depends on how they were actually hacked, but if it was over something stupid like insecure passwords/etc then yes they should be removed from the list.

It can happen, I agree, but take a look at any of the big hosts out there, and tell me how many times entire servers or entire banks of servers have been hacked, and said data deleted. When is the last time that happened to Hostgator, or Bluehost, or GoDaddy, etc.? And those huge hosts are most likely under constant attack, just due to their sheer size and reputation.

The only saving grace for these folks is that apparently the only servers that were hacked are their free servers. But since they also run a paid hosting service, it's kinda scary that the same techs who couldn't secure the free servers are running the paid servers as well. Personally, if I was with Crosswinds, I'd be looking for a new host real fast.

**TaoPhoenix** · May 4th, 2012, 20:28

Between you two, it's certainly news, which is why I posted it. I don't know the "technics" of the hack. I'm of two minds - one, it took me the better part of 3 years to find FIVE hosts who last more than a year, (hat tip with no malice to you wswd who would have won the top tier but declined for other reasons), and two, presuming he fixed his hole, is he "more secure than ever now?"

To that second question, I hope so, I'm in the (minority?) who has perfect backups, so I don't have a scoring penalty defined in my system for a security breach. Bad, yes, but it feels like a "3.1 on my 3.7 scale". My study was designed against total live or die failure metrics, not "managerial decisions". So yes Cwahi gets a NASTY penalty, but in my view, just barely not enough to be dropped.

**TaoPhoenix** · May 4th, 2012, 20:35

Originally Posted by Seraphim

That's breaking news I would think. Have they released an estimate of how many people were affected?

I haven't seen any estimates, I'd conservatively guess 100+

**TaoPhoenix** · May 4th, 2012, 20:40

To wswd valid point, my study had no focus on Paid Side vs Free Side of the same company. Yes, it's a loss of faith when the free side goes down, but let's say ( in 10? ) that the free side, being free, might be missing some obscure piece of high end protection the Paid side has, so it (just so in this case) went down faster than the Paid side. That wouldn't make me happy but I could "justify it" under twisted business logic.

**masterbo** · May 5th, 2012, 01:19

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

... I don't know the "technics" of the hack. ...

And when contacted directly and asked about the incident, what they respond?

**TaoPhoenix** · May 5th, 2012, 06:50

Originally Posted by masterbo

And when contacted directly and asked about the incident, what they respond?

I didn't get into that, I took more of a "business manager" view of all this and say it doesn't matter to me precisely what error they made, only that they failed to block it. Total results were bad news, quoting from over there, "A couple partitions where hit accounting for approximately 400-450GB of data. That covered thousands of accounts."

So they're definitely down a notch, if I had the energy I'd re-do the board and put them last behind IsMyWebsite. I will now only recommend them for special use cases involving high-bandwidth sites. It's been an interesting test of my rules. I'm quite unhappy about the incident, but my study is close to binary live-or-die at the company level, so they squeak past that rule by the skin of their teeth.

**TaoPhoenix** · May 21st, 2012, 06:54

Okay gang,

As of about 6-1-2012 for even round date purposes, I am preparing a more formal writeup of my study with my public recommendations. Yes, the first crucial metric here was targetted against the Fly-By-Night crowd, but with my initial results in, it is time to tighten things even more. cWahi's data loss event is pretty bad, and a couple of the other hosts are invitation-only, so soon (at my slow pace!) there will be a new board posted that will look quite different.

Also, I have taken a quite informal post approach here while events unfolded, but in the writeup, while I am not a trained academic, I will use a much more formal language style.

**frewebhost** · May 23rd, 2012, 03:56

Did you find a good solution what are your bandwidth requirements ?

**TaoPhoenix** · May 23rd, 2012, 10:55

Originally Posted by frewebhost

Did you find a good solution what are your bandwidth requirements ?

Hi Frewebhost, I did in fact find about four good hosts, so my official search is over. Now I am working more on writing content.

**TaoPhoenix** · July 6th, 2012, 11:55

Originally Posted by frewebhost

Did you find a good solution what are your bandwidth requirements ?

Although I would like to know unofficially Frewebhost - are you running a host, and is it still around?

Meanwhile, the board is stable from the last update.

**BrandonTheG** · July 7th, 2012, 10:38

Hey what's up Tao?

**TaoPhoenix** · August 3rd, 2012, 19:46

Originally Posted by BrandonTheG

Hey what's up Tao?

Heh I haven't looked here in a while.

Meanwhile, the board has been quiet. Everybody is still here.

**colorhost** · August 4th, 2012, 02:47

Just checking in! Glad to see this is still going!

Hope everyone is well!

**sander k** · August 5th, 2012, 10:40

Originally Posted by TaoPhoenix

Heh I haven't looked here in a while.

Meanwhile, the board has been quiet. Everybody is still here.

Most are still here I would say and yes it has been quiet for a while allready

**TaoPhoenix** · August 6th, 2012, 23:23

Originally Posted by sander k

Most are still here I would say and yes it has been quiet for a while already

Well, this is the sunset phase - all the main selection stuff is done, so in a sense there can't be any more good news, only bad news if we lose an entrant.