Hey everybody,

I've been lurking on this board for a while reading everything I could. Well today I decided to make a call for help.

I logged into my FTP account and found out it was hacked. The hacker left a cute message for me in the root dir where my html and database dirs are. The website itself didn't appear to be changed, and nothing missing.

I try to make strong passwords but still got hacked. I am on a shared server so maybe it was somebody else that let the hacker in. I am going to do a full system scan locally to check for virii, but I believe my system is clean.

As a precaution I had my current host(halfprice hosting) go ahead and wipe my dir so I can upload a fresh site. They removed frontpage extensions which I don't use anyways. They also changed my ftp pass.

Although... I'm not sure what else to expect from a host? Is that all? Wipe and start over? I didn't know what else to ask the support guy so I let him off the hook.

Either way, as you can tell since I've been lurking for a while, I kinda wanted a new host soon. I've had no major problems with them, except a refund issue that took slightly more than a month to resolve.

What I would like though, is a host with a little more bandwidth. I would like ASP and Access database support, since I don't know PHP or MySQL yet(not sure if I want to learn them... yet)

I'm not expecting a good host for under 10 bucks a month, but I don't want to go over 30ish unless I get really impressed by them. I'm paying 20 now and only get 100megs of space and 7GB of transfer which I feel is not so halfprice.:confused:

I know this was a long post... thx for reading and hopefully something good will come out of all this. Any ideas?

-Fraust

I would hazard a guess that wiping everything clean is a fairly common practice. It would be good to first gather as much information as possible from the logs to try and determine what happened. Do a search on this forum and you will find many good providers should you become unhappy with your current host.

first off, you're paying 20 bucks for 7gb of transfer and 100 megs of space?!?!?! There are MUCH better hosts out their and with some of the BEST hosts you can find 4x that for LESS than 10 bucks.

Popular and respected hosts around here:

lunarpages
dreamhost
hostrocket
cirtexhosting (who I plan to go with)

Originally posted by jackiecc
first off, you're paying 20 bucks for 7gb of transfer and 100 megs of space?!?!?! There are MUCH better hosts out their and with some of the BEST hosts you can find 4x that for LESS than 10 bucks.

Sure, and the majority like that also go under in less than a year or provide lousy service.

The question is, should you even be changing hosts... You had a problem with your site. You talked to your host and they resolved the issue you were having. I haven't heard any complaints about your host in your post. You simply said you got hacked.

Now, if your "nice little message" in your root HTML folder was put in there by an actual server hack, that might be cause for concern, but if it was just a local break, then that has nothing to do with your host, it has something to do with your site or some script you are running. Old version of phpNuke? Old Grey Matter? Some other script on your site that gave someone access or possibly sniffed passwords?

Who knows, it could be a million things. Your host could possibly find something in the raw log files for your site though if you asked them to.

Anyway, you're paying a decent amount per month for what sounds like a decent host. If you're happy with them, don't screw up by trying to go bargain basement. 99/100 you get what you pay for.

Like I said, I don't mind the service... tech support has always been nice and helpful. It's just that I feel like I should have a little more bandwidth for what I'm paying. Mind you, I'm not using it now, but *puts on dreamers hat* I would like to have room to grow if I needed extra bandwidth...

In no way did I want to imply I wanted a bargin basement host... but like anybody else I like to feel like I am getting my money's worth.

I guess it's hard to judge a host just on face value of the features, but it still feels good that you are spending money wisely. I know there are other issues like if its premium bandwidth, # of sites per server, support(if any), etc... and those are hard to measure.

From a customer's standpoint, I can look at well known hosts say a Verio or somebody... compare price and see that 5 dollars more gets me over twice the amount of harddrive space that I currently get. That doesn't give me warm fuzzies....

As for scripts, there are none... I recently upgraded my account with them so that I could start writing some ASP and Access database stuff... my host suggested that the frontpage extensions might have been at fault... which I promptly told them to remove.

*sigh* I guess I'm just a newbie looking for advice... and why anybody would want to hack my little personal website is beyond me *shrugs*

Originally posted by jackiecc
first off, you're paying 20 bucks for 7gb of transfer and 100 megs of space?!?!?! There are MUCH better hosts out their and with some of the BEST hosts you can find 4x that for LESS than 10 bucks.


Id say $20 a month (for the specs you listed) is very reasonable for a good host, especially an Microsoft host.

If you're happy with their service, why leave?

Before you do decide to leave, make a list of approximately 6 oor even 8 hosts who offer similar packages. Then compare their packages to what you have now. Price. Space. Bandwidth. Features. Then compare each companies support network. Finally compare each of these companies to the one you are with now. If you then feel it is best to move on, then do so. But don't rush it. Take your time and make a decision you will be happy with today and even a year from now.

It's very possible the "hacker" got in through a exploit in your own software, so I wouldn't go blaming it on your host just yet. Are you running any outdated versions of software?
phpnuke and invision powerboard have had some security issues in the past.