Netregistry CEO Offers Insight Into Web Host Distribute.IT Hack Investigation

By Justin Lee, June 27, 2011
An imageNetregistry Group CEO Larry Bloch offered The Australian into the investigation the company is conducting into the hack on Distribute.IT of Netregistry Group CEO Larry Bloch

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The CEO of Web hosting provider Netregistry (http://www.netregistry.com/) says he suspects last month's attack on its recently acquired Distribute.IT (http://www.distributeit.com.au/) might be an inside job, according to a report by The Australian.

The attack, which was claimed by hacker group Evil, took about 4,800 domains and hosting accounts out of Distribute.IT's 10,000 customers offline.

The hackers were able to wipe out a large portion of the company's live and backup data, which affected Distribute.IT's reseller network, its main revenue stream, and domain resellers and website owners.

After struggling for more than three weeks in restoring the affected hosting accounts, the Netregistry Group came to Distribute.IT's aid by acquiring Distribute.IT's customers and assets, as well as its subsidiary Click n Go.

Since announcing the acquisition, Netregistry has been working with Distribute.IT to transfer the hosting accounts over to Netregistry.

Disaster management experts believe the attack was the work of an individual that was familiar with the company's business, and may have had remote access.

Netregistry Group CEO Larry Bloch, who is leading the data recovery effort, said the attack was designed to completely destroy Distribute.IT's live and backup data, rather than merely steal it.

He adds that the individuals responsible for the attack had either a working knowledge of the internal data and backup systems or had "figured out the system".

According to Bloch, Distribute.IT had a "fairly sophisticated" snap-shot back-up system in place, which was accessed independently of the main system.

The company has been able to recover some of distribute.IT's data from a three-week-old back-up that had not yet been destroyed.

"It has been a massive four days since Thursday," said Bloch. "We're spending 14 hours per day."

Bloch adds that the Distribute.IT reseller portals are now up and running, and hopes to have the majority of the hosted websites back online within the next few days.

 
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Web Host Netregistry Acquires Distressed Host Distribute.IT, Works to Get Customers Back Online

By Justin Lee, June 23, 2011

A screenshot of Netregistry's blog

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Web hosting provider The Netregistry Group (http://www.netregistry.com/) announced on Thursday it has acquired the customers and assets of Australian web hosting provider Distribute.IT (http://www.distribute.it.com.au/) as well as its subsidiary Click n Go (http://www.clickngo.com.au/). The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition comes nearly two weeks after hacker group Evil attacked the Australian Web host, taking the 4,800 domains and accounts of its customers offline.

In a press release, Netregistry said it will be assisting with resources and solutions to all Distribute.IT customers affected by the hacking.

Netregistry said that it emphasizes with Distribute.IT's situation, and says it is fortunate to be "in a position to offer a stable cloud infrastructure solution to the thousands of customers whose business and livelihoods have been affected."

"We all have a great deal of sympathy and concern for the consequences to Distribute.IT staff, management and customers of this unfortunate incident," said Larry Bloch, CEO of the Netregistry Group. "It is important to us that all Distribute.IT customers know the extent of effort to which Distribute IT have gone to rectify the damage. Distribute.IT had a very solid reputation – that comes from doing a good job for a long time. Without that, I've no doubt that this situation would be a lot worse. I want to remind customers of that excellence and ask for their patience and support as we work through the requirements to return services to all customers as rapidly as possible."

This arrangement is supported by .au Domain Administration, the .au manager, which has been working closely with Distribute IT management and Netregistry to ensure a satisfactory outcome for affected customers.

All of Distribute.IT's customers will be given the option of moving their services over to the Netregistry Group, where hosting customers will be placed in the company's secure cloud clustered, load-balanced infrastructure.

The cloud system is housed at the Global Switch data center, which is considered the largest data center in the Southern hemisphere.

Bloch said the company "will honour all payments for hosting at Distribute.IT," but while it is assessing billing and payment history it will be giving Distribute.IT customers a free hosting service "as soon as humanly possible" so they can upload their site and get their email addresses working.
As for its customers of colocation, website and email hosting services, Distribute.IT recommended that they move these services to Micron21 for continuity. Micron21 said that it may hire some of Distribute.IT's staff.

Meanwhile, .AU Domain Administration confirmed that Distribute.IT had told the organisation that the hackers were targeting its hosting services, and not its domain services.

Additionally, the company also confirmed it does not store any credit card information in its databases or logs, and so its customers' financial information was never compromised during the attack.

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