Distribute.IT client tells: I had 20 websites hit in hack attack, but I’m still a customer

One Distribute.IT customer who temporarily lost 20 websites when the Melbourne-based hosting company was struck down by a massive cyber-attack says some affected resellers are overreacting and should have had backups in place for their clients.

Thousands of website owners are reeling after Distribute.IT announced the information and details of nearly 5,000 websites were wiped out as part of the attack, the culprit of which is still unknown.

But Andrew Thompson, founder of Rockhampton-based website hosting and design company Keppel Net, says he has used Distribute.IT for seven years and will continue to remain a customer, despite temporarily losing 20 websites in the attack.

“I think this has exposed how disorganised the industry can be. Resellers that shouldn’t be reselling because they don’t have the knowledge or skill to have a website service, rely on companies like Distribute.IT to do cloud hosting and all that sort of thing,” Thompson says.

“But you have to take some responsibility yourself. I’m not going to make a promise to my customers based on what my suppliers say they can do. You have to have your own systems in place.”

Website owners have taken to online discussion forums such as Whirlpool to vent their anger. Many said they had lost years of work and business details.

But Thompson says because he ran multiple backups as part of his business, his clients only experienced a short period of downtime. He says because he maintained backups and was able to explain the situation, not one client left his business.

While Thompson says Distribute.IT has “definitely made a few screw ups”, he believes the company is ethical and doesn’t deserve some of the attacks being thrown its way. 

“I think it’s all in how you approach them. I sent them an email regarding some of my websites, they responded, and we had no problems at all.”

Thompson’s comments echo those made by Sophos technology chief of Asia Pacific, Paul Ducklin, who told SmartCompany yesterday that all website owners and developers needed to have their own backup systems in place, rather than rely on the word of their hosting provider.

“What this whole mess shows is that there are a lot of resellers that shouldn’t have been left as vulnerable as they were,” Thompson says.

“They should have had the wit to have backups on different servers. Those sites shouldn’t have been lost.”

“It’s simple logic.”

So far Distribute.IT has mainly communicated to its customers via an online blog, as its own site was taken down. It was only on Tuesday that it revealed information contained on four separate servers had been deemed unrecoverable by data experts.

While Thompson says the communication from Distribution.IT had been unusually slow, he believed the company still had integrity.

“I will remain a customer. Stuff-ups happen, and we’ve all made them, but as far as I’m concerned they have integrity, and integrity counts with me.”

Anthony Wong, president of the Australian Computer Society, says the disaster underlined the importance of making backups of all type of data.

“I think backing up your system is an essential requirement of any business. If I’m providing a service to customers and not actually backing up their data, there is definitely a duty of care issue there.”

“This is one of the most essential parts of running a business today. It would be like saying, ‘My building burned down and I have nothing left’. You need to do more.”