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Tragicomedy - polish "high-end" hosting company hacked and no backups from almost a year
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Tragicomedy - polish "high-end" hosting company hacked and no backups from almost a year

Hello,

Just FYI, one of polish hosting companies, known as those "high end", more expensive hosting companies are just facing their irresponsibility...

www.2be.pl - because we're talking about this company, founded in 2002, was hosting provider with domains and other connected services. It is owned by one of most recognizable web marketing agency in Poland. They have been hacked on 27.02 but they have just discovered it on 29.02... All clients websites are down since now, on 3.03 they have set temporary pop3 service (without smtp, webmail, ssl) for their clients and buggy domain panel which is dead right now. At this moment about 1200 domains are still down and clients have no idea what to do now. They have no access to their websites, to their old mails, to everything. They can't even change DNSes of the domains bought at this company.

They have just informed that they will be able to recover client websites... for the state from 28.06.2015.......

You're probably curious why it's going like that in "professional" company? Here's the answer. As the owner has said in media, they have fired their admins on december with no reason given, company was on autopilot from january. First problems have appeared about 10.02, then they have hired external company to fix the thing. Owner has admitted that this company have tried to blackmail him, giving invoices for amount greater than expected by him for their service, he has not paid them, and probably that company have done all this bad things which we can see now...

Nobody knows what exactly will happen on next days, 2be has announced that they're trying to recover data from cleaned hard drives, but I'm not sure if they will be able do that. As they're trying to tell clients that their last working backup is from 28.06.2015 then you can imagine how professional they are.

It is just a lesson to all of you, that it is irrelevant if you use high end or low end company to host your webpages. If owner is stingy, you can have problems, no matter how much you're paying for your services.

Comments

  • They can't even change DNSes of the domains bought at this company.

    Old advice, never have your domain registered, or at the very least its nameservers, at the same place you're hosting a domain.

    Thanked by 3jaypeesmith lion Shade
  • ricardo said: Old advice, never have your domain registered, or at the very least its nameservers, at the same place you're hosting a domain.

    Yup, you know that as a professional admin/user/whatever. But clients who came to them and have all the services provided in one place was happy, since now.

    Here is news article about that, if sombody wants to know more: https://translate.google.pl/translate?sl=pl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpolsatnews.pl%2Fwiadomosc%2F2016-03-06%2Fawaria-w-firmie-hostingowej-padlo-prawie-2-tysiace-domen-paraliz-sklepow-i-blogow%2F&edit-text=

  • MunMun Member

    Never heard of them.

    Thanked by 2jar doughmanes
  • Mun said: Never heard of them.

    It's understandable, the company served only services on the Polish market. 140USD/year for 60GB shared hosting, offer for VPSes was "only on request", probably because of price. I just want to know how all those VPSes was working since there was no admin during whole January.

  • clients who came to them and have all the services provided in one place was happy, since now.

    Indeed, everything's OK til it isn't :)

    2000 sites

    That does seem relatively small, though obviously not trivial. The article does seem a bit sensational, but maybe that's the translation..

    Supposedly well run companies have the run-over-by-a-bus scenario covered. It looks like a bunch of dark stuff happened, the company was thought of as a captive customer, perhaps, or their fired techs may have something to do with it. Tits up either way.

  • ricardo said: That does seem relatively small, though obviously not trivial. The article does seem a bit sensational, but maybe that's the translation..

    Supposedly well run companies have the run-over-by-a-bus scenario covered. It looks like a bunch of dark stuff happened, the company was thought of as a captive customer, perhaps, or their fired techs may have something to do with it. Tits up either way.

    2000 sites are dead at this time, no idea how many was at first days of downtime. Their have providing hosting services for really large businesses, I'm just curious what they will do now, when domains are going out of Google at this time (10th day of downtime)...

  • I'd guess the unlucky ones end up with nothing. Others will hurriedly scrape the wayback machine and maybe even have backups. The article mentions some large busineses, if they put all the eggs in this one hosting basket, they should've paid someone who had more of a clue, and contingency plan. Harsh but true.

  • ricardo said: nothing

    Nah, they would have website from 06.2015 :-)

    Thanked by 1ricardo
  • Sometimes when a potential 6 months of hard work disappears, it can feel like nothing :)

  • OVH is Polish. Maybe they can jelp.

  • @tenpera said:
    OVH is Polish. Maybe they can jelp.

    u wot m8?

  • theqkash said: u wot m8?

    That's true, why are you surprised? :)

    The story of Octave Klaba is a great example of how the collapse of communism has benefited Europe and the world. Klaba was born in 1975 in Poland. He learned to code as a boy and at the age of ten he debugged an early PC his engineer father Henryk had bought to manage the accounts of the collective farm he managed. Octave received his first tech income for that job--a chocolate bar. In 1991, with communism disintegrating and Poland’s border controls collapsing, his family sold up and emigrated to France. They arrived in Roubaix, in the gritty coalmining northeast of France, with $5,000 cash and all their worldly goods in the trunk of an old Wartburg. His father worked in a machine shop to support the family while Octave was put back a year in school as he coped with learning French. Today Octave Klaba is CEO of OVH, the third largest web-hosting firm in the world with 170,000 servers in 17 data centers and revenue of 225 million euros ($292 million) (*) last year.

    Source: http://www.dailycloud.info/european-web-hosting-giant-ovh-targets-us-growth-with-dedicated-private-cloud/

    And his Polish family also are working on OVH, look page 14: https://www.ovh.com/us/newsroom/documents/presskit-OVH-com.pdf

  • @Anna_Parker You're confusing ownership and registration. OVH was a French company until 2006 and then became somehow multinational after opening offices (which, I guess, are locally registered).

  • NekkiNekki Veteran

    How does the history of OVH and it's CEO have any relevance to this conversation?

  • AmitzAmitz Member

    I told my wife about OVH and the history of its CEO after she blamed me for several irrelevant things in correlation to my alleged part in housekeeping.

    Nekki said: How does the history of OVH and it's CEO have any relevance to this conversation?

    That's what she said.

  • gbshousegbshouse Member, Host Rep
    edited March 2016

    Whole bunch of even larger providers don't have DR plans etc. There was recently discussion about this on one of the Polish DevOps' FB groups.

    By the way - Rage4 is Polish too :) (and we have proper DR plan)

    Thanked by 1Clouvider
  • 2be.pl is not "high end", in fact it's one of the worst companies on polish market.

  • theqkashtheqkash Member
    edited March 2016

    Spoofy said: 2be.pl is not "high end", in fact it's one of the worst companies on polish market.

    Until we talk about prices your opinion can be real.

  • SpoofySpoofy Member
    edited March 2016

    @theqkash said:
    Until we talk about prices your opinion can be real.

    Prices? They used to offer shared hosting in horrible price.
    Polish market is specific in some kind of way, but there are many companies that offer great support, good quality services in reasonable price - but 2be.pl is just not one of them.

  • They are still down :D

    Welcome to the home of 2be.pl To change this page, upload your website into the public_html directory Date Created: Wed Mar 16 15:37:00 2016

    http://2be.pl/

  • Spacedust said: They are still down :D

    Welcome to the home of 2be.pl

    To change this page, upload your website into the public_html directory
    Date Created: Wed Mar 16 15:37:00 2016

    There is something more funny.

    They have told clients that there would be copy of their data from 2015. Now they have told that copy is indeed available, but only for one of three physical servers on which they were websites. Physically, a very possible thing turns out that some customers may not receive any copy of your files, or they will be even older than the June 2015 ...

  • Seems like their website is back online.

  • With missing links and "99,96%" uptime ;D

  • Down again.

    btw. this "website" have the best title ever. "2BE.PL - cheap domains from all over the world and secure hosting"

    secure hosting

  • Surely rebranding as not2be would be a shrewd move

  • aglodekaglodek Member
    edited March 2016

    @ricardo said: Surely rebranding as not2be would be a shrewd move

    I think rebranding into something with absolutely no ties to their old business would be the way to go after such major f… er, fiasko. They may very well be working on this, hence so little attention being paid to their "old" website.

    Despite the nation's 1000+ year rich history and traditions, the Polish have uncommonly high tolerance for Johnny-come-lately outfits, hence this is pretty much standard operating procedure for any businessman - or politician, for that matter! - with half a brain ;) No matter how many times they get burned, most people still trust and embrace the next "new" guy who comes along with the same shi… er, goods to sell. Poland's current "new" government being a good case in point.

    Thanked by 1ricardo
  • @aglodek, that was my poor attempt at a Shakespeare reference

    I totally agree. Once a hosting provider tanks like that for a time scale measured in weeks or months, they have no reputation to keep. I think they're maybe in a position where things are unrecoverable.

    Not sure about the politics though, all I know is Poland is doing alright after joining the EU. :)

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