Update, Shared Hosting Clients - 21st June 2011

Our Data Recovery teams have been working around the clock in an attempt to recover data from the affected servers shared Servers. At this time, We regret to inform that the data, sites and emails that were hosted on Drought, Hurricane, Blizzard and Cyclone can be considered by all the experts to be unrecoverable. While every effort will be made to continue to gain access to the lost information from those hosting servers, it seems unlikely that any usable data will can be salvaged from these platforms. In assessing the situation, our greatest fears have been confirmed that not only was the production data erased during the attack, but also key backups, snapshots and other information that would allow us to reconstruct these Servers from the remaining data.

We have been advised by the team and the storage & capacity managers that we no longer have sufficient resources within the platform to transfer the 4,800 domains and accounts to other parts of the platform, and at this point we cannot undertake further provisioning of servers & accounts on the current infrastructure. This leaves us little choice but to assist you in any way possible to transfer your hosting and email needs to other hosting providers. We would like to thank those loyal customers who have stuck by us during this difficult time and elected to have their hosting remain on our servers. Your thoughts, consideration and kindness will not be easily forgotten. Much soul-searching and thought has gone into taking this course of action, but at this time we cannot see any alternatives for the affected servers.

When setting up Hosting with another Provider please email the new Nameserver settings which will be obtained from them to distributeit888@gmail.com and we'll make the changes as soon as possible.

The team will continue to try to recover the information from the affected servers; however at this time we have been advised by the recovery teams that the chances for recovery beyond the data and files so far retrieved are slim. The overall magnitude of the tragedy and the loss of our information and yours is simply incalculable; and we are distressed by the actions of the parties responsible for this reprehensible act.

The DistributeIT Situation Thus Far...

As you would be aware, DistributeIT was the subject of a targeted, malicious, attack by hackers late on Saturday, June 11. The attack was a deliberate attempt to take down the DistributeIT business, and doesn't appear to be specifically aimed at stealing client data for gain. The attackers were coordinated in their approach and set out to do as much damage to our systems and software as possible, which they were largely successful at achieving. The attack was very swift, precise and lasted only a short duration and was targetted towards destroying drive header files therefore maximizing the impact in the short time they had before our engineers shut down the Network.

Following the attack, our staff have been working around the clock to recover all systems. Whilst many client services were restored on the Sunday/Monday, there are services still impacted by the incident which our staff are continuing to work through. The attackers clearly knew what they were looking for, and what damage they wanted to cause.

We are very upset and grieved over the loss of business to our valued clients, and the magnitude of this callous attack affects us all. We are still in the dark as to the true motives of the attackers, however at this time we cannot afford to dwell on these matters.

At this stage our priority is and always has been to help our clients get back online as quickly as possible, and we will be working for as long as it takes to achieve this outcome. Following that, we will be in a better position to make a more detailed press release regarding the nature of the incident, and our plans moving forward.