Welcome to the Web Hosting News Monthly Recap, your roundup of last month’s top web hosting news stories all in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know about:
1st – Heartbleed Open-SSL Flaw Still Unpatched on Nearly 200,000 Devices and Servers
The vulnerability, which could be used to reveal up to 64KB of memory to a connected client or server, was revealed nearly three years ago. However, tens of thousands of servers are still vulnerable. In the U.S. alone there are 43,032 vulnerable servers with the majority hosted by AWS.
As Tom Spring from Threatpost reports:
“Part of the issue is that it’s easy to create new servers in AWS that don’t enforce the same type of safety provisions as they once required. What used to require a sysadmin and a capital expenditure can now be done with a few lines of code. And we know that both real and virtual servers are easy to forget about. Particularly when created outside of normal IT processes. So it’s unsurprising that some of these ‘forgotten servers’ are unpatched and dangerous.â€
2nd – A Server That’s Been Running for 24 Years with No Unplanned Downtime Is Being Shut down for Good.
Phil Hogan, an IT application architect, booted up a brand new Stratus Technologies fault-tolerant server in 1993, and now, 24 years later, he’s pulling the plug. Through all these years, the server’s never had any unplanned downtime.
Adding to the surprisingly robust server, he say’s roughly 80% of the components are still original, and the server has gone for lengths as long as 4 years without rebooting. Talk about reliable. The system is set to be retired in April and a new, upgraded system put in place.
3rd – Bluehost Laying off More Than Half Its Workforce
Bluehost, owned by Endurance International Group (EIG), is laying off 440 employees beginning in March and ending in October. This will leave the company with less than half of its 750 person workforce.
While official memos from Bluehost and EIG cite the move as an effort to provide better customer service, VentureBeat hints at competition from AWS as the reasoning for the cuts.
4th – Mirai Creator at It Again? Extortion Threats Could Signal a Return to DDoS Attacks
Anna-senpai, the alleged creator of the Mirai botnet capable of delivering more than 1 Tbps per second is reportedly sending extortion threats to web hosts threatening a massive DDoS attack unless a bitcoin payment ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 USD is made. Some web hosts have ignored the attacks with no repercussions, but others have been knocked offline entirely by the attacks.
The Mirai botnet is the same botnet used to take down Dyn last October and its source code has been released for free on the internet. We’ll be sure to keep tabs on this as time goes on. Be sure to read our recent guide to preparing for DDoS attacks.
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