Restoration Woes Continue For Many Hacked Websites

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Restoration Woes Continue For Many Hacked Websites

February 19 2007 -- Many businesses are still out of pocket due to their web sites being offline since the recent spate of hackings on New Zealand web sites.

Web hosting provider PrimeHost said its call centre has been flooded with calls from desperate businesses affected by the hackings made on ihug's and Quik.co.nz internet servers, requesting assistance to help get their web sites back online.

Dale McIsaac, Director of Operations at PrimeHost said it was alarming that affected customers were still offline and had been essentially stranded and offered far too little, far too late by their provider.

"We have had technical and design staff working around the clock rebuilding and restoring web sites which ihug/Quik.co.nz could not provide a backup of to their own customers. The incident has caused much disruption for many companies and we have had some fairly distressed folk contacting us eager to get there sites back online. Had their provider kept a proper backup, much time and effort in rebuilding their web sites could have been avoided", he said.

Mr McIsaac says it reinforces the necessity for businesses to keep a local copy of their web site on their computer or on CD, rather than to rely on internet provider assurances that their data will be safe and retrievable in the event of a hacking attack or major server failure.

One affected business restored by PrimeHost, Terry Dunn from krittakrates.co.nz who specialises in pet transport services said he relies heavily on the Internet for export bookings, and was "totally wrapt" that his two web sites were quickly restored, after receiving little co-operation from his previous provider.

“We received very little information from Ihug apart from them telling us they did not have a backup of our sites”, said Mr Dunn.

Gillian Richardson from Automotive Security Systems said her web site caralarm.co.nz was also restored by PrimeHost and is back online. She previously said that she had lost 80 percent of her business due to her site being unavailable.

"We are also working with a number of other stranded businesses in rebuilding and restoring their web sites as quickly as possible which were not provided with backups from their Internet provider", Mr McIsaac said.

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