A2 Hosting Down for a Week, Seemingly Infected with Malware

cheat_master30 · Apr 27, 2019

Well, this is a fine mess said company got themselves into. Basically, they've been down for days after what seems like a malware infection on their Windows servers. What's more, it seems like said infection may have been caused by ransomware of some kind, since customers have been reporting their files as renamed to .lock files with a message that the area was attacked and encrypted.

Here's an article about the debacle with more evidence from customer tweets:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/26/a2_hosting_outage/

So yeah, if you're using them, I hope you've got backups of some kind, and that you're going to looking for a new hosting company as soon as possible. Cause this one seems like it may be screwed.

zappaDPJ · Apr 27, 2019

It's a bit of a shame because they ~~are~~ were rated quite highly for start-up sites.

LeadCrow · Apr 27, 2019

A week's downtime is longer than acceptable. No matter how serious the damage to your infrastructure, you should at least have the possibility to roll a recent backup, wether network-wide or server specific restores for priority clients.

That said, the industry needs to ditch Windows servers in general. These black boxes are harder to keep secure and more trouble than worth, especially now that serverless/container microinstances are taking over.

cornnfedd · Apr 28, 2019

Im actually surprised this doesnt happen more often, or maybe it does and we dont hear about it...

overcast · Apr 28, 2019

By any chance A2 hosting is owned by EIG Media? Most of the EIG owned sites often suffer the hosting issues every now and then.

Edit: No they are not.

LeadCrow · Apr 28, 2019

cornnfedd said:
Im actually surprised this doesnt happen more often, or maybe it does and we dont hear about it...

A downtime just doesnt last long enough to scare the target audience. Many old webhosts have adapted poorly to today's market, or might be unable to improve their competitivity. People are piling on A2 but it was a reference for quite some time.

...we need a nightmare ranking of the best worst hosts somewhere.

zappaDPJ · Apr 28, 2019

It appears the reason they haven't been able to bring their servers back on-line is because their backups were also compromised. I've seen one report suggesting they are trying to restore from backups that are more than a month old.

I should add that seems to be at odds with their status page but the info above comes from more than one source.

haqzore · Apr 29, 2019

overcast said:
By any chance A2 hosting is owned by EIG Media? Most of the EIG owned sites often suffer the hosting issues every now and then.

"often suffer the hosting issues every now and then" .... Which one is it?

Is this just more off-topic EIG bandwagon hate? Been a little bit since I've seen it on TAZ.
I rented a server from an EIG company for a decade and never had downtime issues.

Anyways... back to the issue at hand. I feel bad for A2 customers. Unless you had local backups, you're almost hostage while waiting it out..

LeadCrow · Apr 29, 2019

Webhosts are always a potential liability. Who could've expected this popular one's contingency plans were inadapted to modern realities? Unchecked growth is not necessarilly a positive, especially if it degrades your ability to respond to crisis situations and guarantee superior customer service despite any setback.

craigForo · Apr 29, 2019

I have 4 sites on A2. Fortunately all are on Linux servers with no issues.

overcast · Apr 29, 2019

haqzore said:
"often suffer the hosting issues every now and then" .... Which one is it?

Is this just more off-topic EIG bandwagon hate? Been a little bit since I've seen it on TAZ.
I rented a server from an EIG company for a decade and never had downtime issues.

Whichever suits your boat. I am not playing the semantics game.

I had bad experience with them on two accounts (Arvixe and Hostgator, both are their properties now). So I thought I should let the OP know but realized A2 is not owned by them so edited the reply too.

TheLegend · May 2, 2019

Craigles700 said:
I have 4 sites on A2. Fortunately all are on Linux servers with no issues.

You need to make sure that you backup your files too. All of my clients on windows server have huge problem. I'm very stressed right now. All their windows server down... Very sad.

TheLegend · May 2, 2019

overcast said:
Whichever suits your boat. I am not playing the semantics game.

I had bad experience with them on two accounts (Arvixe and Hostgator, both are their properties now). So I thought I should let the OP know but realized A2 is not owned by them so edited the reply too.

Arvixe is big NO. It has been owned by EIG. One of my colleagues recommend me asphostportal. Anyone experience with this provider? I see they have good reviews too.

zappaDPJ · May 2, 2019

They claim to have restored most of the impacted data but their clients are saying otherwise. They have employed a cybersecurity firm to try and restore the files encrypted by ransomware.

https://www.a2hosting.com/blog/windows-service-update/

MagicalAzareal · May 6, 2019

cheat_master30 said:
their Windows servers

Biggest mistake right there.

cornnfedd said:
Im actually surprised this doesnt happen more often, or maybe it does and we dont hear about it...

It happens all the time, the media has just gotten desensitised to it.
Another compromise? Just another day on the web.

zappaDPJ said:
ransomware

Ransomware? Oh, that is so Windows...

TheLegend · May 8, 2019

MagicalAzareal said:
Biggest mistake right there.

It happens all the time, the media has just gotten desensitised to it.
Another compromise? Just another day on the web.

Ransomware? Oh, that is so Windows...

Yes, I see this is ransomware issue. You can read on https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/26/a2_hosting_outage/ and https://windowswebhostingreview.com...e-looking-for-a2-asp-net-hosting-alternative/

LeadCrow · May 8, 2019

Windows as a platform is nowhere near secure enough for public servers. It's costly but just fine for intranets mostly using Windows software.

I'm surprised webhosts even offer such plans nowadays. Even if they were high margin once, most software that required libraries like asp, clr or silverlight could run on top of linux stacks.

MagicalAzareal · May 8, 2019

LeadCrow said:
I'm surprised webhosts even offer such plans nowadays. Even if they were high margin once, most software that required libraries like asp, clr or silverlight could run on top of linux stacks.

I'm not sure on that, they're certainly getting there, but they probably have a similar problem to Rails (where a lot of libraries only work with Unix based systems) where a lot of libraries are written specifically for Windows. Maybe soonish though.

Exa-Kent · Jun 10, 2019

I'm not sure what issue they are facing, but give them some time to fix their issue as well. I believe they able work more efficience.

A2 Hosting Down for a Week, Seemingly Infected with Malware

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