BlueSquare Data Hosting Division acquired by Namesco Ltd.

Two weeks after my short review about my VPS provider, FsckVPS (FsckVPS is part of Vaserv) has been sold again.

BlueSquare Data has agreed to accept an offer from Namesco Ltd, to acquire its hosting division (consisting of VAServ, Server Arcade and PoundHost brands) with immediate effect. Namesco is part of Dada SpA, a leading international group in the domain name and hosting markets significantly focussed on developing and growing its presence in the UK market.

Read the full news here.

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FsckVPS short review

As I wrote in an earlier post after a hacker attack my VPS provider, FsckVPS had been aquired by BlueSquare, and I got a new VPS of them.

After a few months usage here is my short review.

Well, I am very satisfied with the "new" FsckVPS and their services.
They gave me 2 free months services because of my old/attacked VPS's downtime and data loss.
After some initial problems my VPS works perfectly with minimal downtime, and it never crashed till now.
Price is unchanged, starts from just $9.95/month!!! This is a very important factor for me, because I want a cheap VPS.
Support is fast and professional.
The old HyperVM panel has been removed (yeah, wow, more chance to security!!!), so I can manage my VPS trough SSH only (putty, command line). But I am familiar with Linux (Debian), so this is not a problem for me. And just now FsckVPS starts to provide SolusVM panel, so if I will need a control panel ever, I can get it.

And also they start to provide KVM. KVM is a full hardware level VPS environment allowing both Windows + Linux to run at close to native speeds. It allows to do the basic restart/reload of  VPS, load kernel modules and add swap space.
So if I want more control and speed on my VPS, I can move to KVM, but presently I stay with OpenVZ.

Conclusion: great service, low price, 5/5 stars.

If you want to find a cheap, but reliable unmanaged VPS provider I strongly suggest you FsckVPS/Vaserv.

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My VPS rebuild request has been acknowledged

I received a short message from FSCKVPS:
"Rebuild Request Acknowledged."

Now I could shout wooow, yeeaah, suuupeeer, but I just quitly ask when will be my vps online?

And I am hearing a sad Slipknot song, Vermillion Pt.2

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Good Bye US datacentre?

Quote from Vaserve status page:

"Q:I ordered a server in the US, so why has it been provisioned in the UK?
A:Due to the hardware we were using in the US, we have taken advantage of the new servers afforded to us by BlueSquare which are of a much superior quality and redundancy level. We were also able to setup the servers quicker in the UK than the US due to the ‘staff on the ground’ at the datacentre in the UK."

My VPS was in an US datacentre Dallas, Texas. Hmmm....I dont know, what should I do now. My visitors come from US mainly, perhaps I should look for another VPS provider.

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Vaserve acquired by BlueSquare

"Dear VaServ customer,

As I am sure you are aware due to a combination of issues a large number of VPS nodes were compromised by a third party, which has resulted in some customers suffering a data loss.

Vaserv’s UK operations have been based at the BlueSquare Data Centre for a number of years, and we have a very strong working relationship with Rus Foster and his team. Once Rus made us aware of the major issues that his company was facing, we quickly mobilised a number of our experienced Linux engineers to help with the restore and rebuild of the VPS platform. Our engineers, along with vaserv staff have been working on these issues for well over 24 hours now, and we are starting to catch our tail.

We have been in dialog with Rus regarding the ongoing support of Vaserv, and it is with pleasure that I can announce BlueSquare Data Group (www.bluesquaredatagroup.com) will be taking over the operations of Vaserv in the future.

For the meantime we will continue to support vaserv and Rus wherever we can, and some customers are already being moving onto our own BlueSquare infrastructure.

Our short term aim is to get as many customers back up as soon as possible, as well as providing customers who have suffered a data loss a new VPS on the BlueSquare platform.

Our long term aim will be to move all the current VAServ customers onto the new BlueSquare Linux VPS platform, which has been in development for a number of months, and boasts industry leading security and reliability, along with the speed and uptime you would expect from VAserv.

We look forward to working with Rus and his team, and are excited about the opportunities this brings for you as a customer, providing exactly what you have been used to, but on a even better hardware and software platform. We have no intentions to change customer pricing.

Please continue to liaise with Rus and his team during these difficult times (as we don’t have any access to the day-to-day tech support of VAserv). We will continue to assist with infrastructure in the meantime, and will be in further contact once the majority of the recent issues have been resolved.

Thank you for your continued support,

Best Regards,"

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New VPS has been requested

I requested a new vps from FSCKVPS a few hours ago. Because I am the one of lots of unlucky guys who has 100% data loss on their vps. It seems I am not pessimist, but realist.
Now I am sitting back and waiting for the new vps,
but my hand is on my colt. :)

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Bang Bang

FSCKVPS (they are part of Vaserv) post the following message on their status page:

"Dear Customer,

We have worked tirelessly through the night and over the last 48 hours to recover as many VPS as possible. However, we have now reached the end of all of our servers, and as such, if your server is not currently up, or not partly up (i.e. it is up but not working due to a configuration issue) then it is unfortunate that you will have lost your data due to this third party attack.

We are offering all customers who have lost data a brand new VPS on our new platform. If you are in the position of requiring a new VPS due to your old one not coming back up, please submit a support ticket with the subject ‘New VPS Required’, and including the specification you ordered in the message. We will then start to provision these straight away. We will aim to have all new servers up within 6 hours at the latest, of course providing no new issues occur. If you have your own backups you can then restore these onto the new VPS.

We will also be providing two months free hosting as compensation to customers that have lost data and require a new VPS.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused, and your patience and understanding in these very difficult times.
Regards, VAServ Team."

Bang Bang

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The Attack

A large internet service provider said data for as many as 100,000 websites was destroyed by attackers who targeted a zero-day vulnerability in a widely-used virtualization application.

Technicians at UK-based Vaserv.com were still scrambling to recover data on Monday evening UK time, more than 24 hours after unknown hackers were able to gain root access to the company's system, Rus Foster, the company's director told The Register. He said the attackers were able to penetrate his servers by exploiting a critical vulnerability in HyperVM, a virtualization application made by a company called LXLabs.

"We were hit by a zero-day exploit" in version 2.0.7992 of the application, he said. "I've heard from other people they've been hit by the same thing."

Foster said he's been unable to reach anyone at LXLabs to discuss the suspected vulnerability.

More on The Register

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My websites are offline

Dear Visitor, Reader, Member of my following websites:

http://www.laszlomolnar.name - it is up again!
http://www.laszlo.molnar.name - it is up again! (redirected to http://www.laszlomolnar.name)
http://www.b21club.com - it is up again!
http://www.languagejuice.com - it is up again!
http://www.osboom.com - parked on Sedo
http://www.jammmer.com - parked on Sedo
http://www.wifisoftwares.com - it is up again!

Two days ago my virtual server provider, fsckvps.com had been hacked.
You can read a very long forum thread about this attack and the chaos here
So all of my websites/webprojetcs went offline, and they are still offline today.
I hope FSCKVPS's staff is working hard and fast and they will restore my vps asap.
But it is only a hope. I am so pessimist, I think my datas will not be restored.
And I will have to reconfig my vps and rebuild my websites/webprojects.
Not a nice future vision.

Because I don't know when will be my vps/websites online again now I redirect temporarily all of my websites to this blog and I will inform you about my vps/websites issues here.

I post this first blog entry with date of 2020 (edited! - back to 2009), because I want it to the top of my blog. If you want to read the full story, start here please.

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