Integrated Online Solutions

2011.10.29 Vex troubles

I assume by now that everyone has noticed the fact that Vex has been down. Now that it is partially up I can get this email out to explain it. Someone was able to hack the shell server and maliciously wiped out the system. Unfortunately that took out the user directories as well as everything else. I am currently restoring from backup. It should be complete by morning. As your directory is restored your web site should come back up. As for the shell server that will take a little longer. I have it at home now and I will wipe it and build from scratch. However I am considering not restoring it to the same level as before. I need to make it much more secure than it was and that means restricting services. There will definitely be no telnet or ftp. And I am even contemplating retiring shell. It's a nice service but there are reasons that hardly anyone offers it. We'll see. Meanwhile, the one service that shell performed up to now is FTP to upload your web sites. I will look into a better way of doing that. In the mean time if you need to update your site just email me the modified files and I will install them for you. I am sorry for the troubles and hope to be fully functioning again very soon.