Fergie's Tech Blog

UK: Massive Hack in Fasthosts

Simon de Bruxelles writes in The Times Online:

Hundreds of websites have been shut down temporarily by one of the largest web hosting companies in Britain after the personal details of customers were stolen by computer hackers.

The hackers managed to access the “master database” of Fasthosts for information, including addresses, bank details, e-mails and passwords.

The action is expected to lose vital business for hundreds of small companies in the run-up to Christmas.

Fasthosts claimed that it had no option other than to perform an emergency shutdown after it discovered that the hackers had tried to use information gleaned from its servers. New passwords had to be sent out by post rather than e-mail to avoid the information being compromised again.

posted by Fergie @ 12/06/2007 08:04:00 AM