No Surprise Over Website Hacking

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

No Surprise Over Website Hacking

February 16 2007 -- Internet web hosting provider PrimeHost says it is not surprised that around 100 web sites across the country have been hacked and defaced by an international hacker.

Dale McIsaac, Director of Operations at PrimeHost announced that customers hosted on their network have not been affected by the recent web site hacking intrusions but indicates the problem is largely due to many Internet providers still running insecure and outdated systems which are vulnerable to security exploits.

“You would be shocked at how many Internet companies are still using vastly outdated operating system distributions to host commercial customer web sites. PrimeHost is one of the very few Internet hosting companies in New Zealand to run advanced anti-hacker technologies including the Redhat Enterprise 4 operating system, renowned to be the most secure platform for hosting in the world." said Mr McIsaac.

He said this is a serious issue for customers as many did not have the technological know-how to determine whether their providers systems were fully secure. Customers should check their web sites to ensure they had not been defaced, which was a clear indication that a hacker had penetrated security mechanisms.

Many successful hacking attempts are due to Internet providers running outdated software on their servers, and customer installed-applications such as bulletin boards, forum software and mailing lists were commonly exploited by Internet hackers.

"With so many vulnerabilities and exploits being found in server software applications, it is essential that Internet providers maintain a high level of server security by applying patches to counter exploits on a network wide basis as soon as they are discovered, as well as having adequate firewall and denial of service mitigation protection", he said.

PrimeHost is offering technical assistance to any businesses which have been hacked on other providers, including conducting security penetration tests to identify server security holes or vulnerabilities in customer installed applications.

ENDS

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