UK’s Numero Uno Web Firm Suffers from Security Breach

United Kingdom's top Web host, Fasthosts, sent emergency mails to its users after the police were asked to investigate on an information breach. The firm asked its users to change their passwords.

The enterprise said that they found proofs of network invasion that involved the Fasthosts server. They are of the opinion that the hacker has gained admittance into their system, which has helped him to get the user names as well as service passwords. The Inquirer reported this on October 18, 2007.

The firm also said that it's working together with the police and suspected the breach was to obtain Fasthosts' user information. The company has asked its customers to update their passwords as a precaution, including all the passwords for the files that could be changed through the users' control panel like the passwords of the email, control panel, FTP and database. In a bid to give protection to its customers, the firm has employed user password encryption, Fasthosts said.

The company said that it believes its procedures and practices to be advanced, and that its effort in continuously protecting the customers' data has been good. The company also said that it's confident of its capability to provide protection to its customers. Fasthosts also apologized for the inconvenience the users faced due to security review. Web User reported this on October 19, 2007.

Sophos's Senior Technology Consultant, Graham Cluley, regarding the breach issue, said that the reason behind repeated security breaches is because humans sometimes take bad decisions and do mistakes. A user may take a bad decision about the security of their PCs, send a wrong file to a wrong person unintentionally, or it may be an IT team which is not properly doing its assigned work of securing the defense mechanisms of their network with applications like patches, firewalls, anti-virus software and network access not performing his job properly. The Web User reported this on October 19, 2007.

Graham Cluley further added that protecting and securing the PCs and the company's network accesses reduces the risks of security breaches that are happening. So, in order to prevent appearing in any news headlines tomorrow, the company should take proper precautions now.

Related article: US Passes Baton to Asia in Spam Relay

» SPAMfighter News - 11/1/2007