ASP.NET hosting provider SmarterASP.NET is currently working on recovering customer data after being hit by a ransomware attack over the weekend.
Operating since 1999, SmarterASP.NET has datacenters in the United States and Europe and serves over 440,000 customers worldwide.
On Saturday, the company fell victim to a ransomware attack that resulted in its customers’ data being encrypted.
Impacted customers reported that even the hosting provider’s website was inaccessible in the beginning. However, even after the site was restored, the control panel could not be opened.
Apparently, SmarterASP.NET failed to inform customers on the incident right away. On its live chat box page, the company did say it suffered from a major outage, but did not provide additional information.
On Sunday, the company revealed it had suffered a ransomware attack, and also noted that recovery efforts were well underway for all affected customers.
“Your hosting account was under attack and hackers have encrypted all your data. We are now working with security experts to try to decrypt your data and also to make sure this would never happen again,” the company said in a message on its website.
Although no information has been provided on the malware, screenshots posted online by some of the affected customers revealed that it had appended the extension .kjhbx to the encrypted files.
In a subsequent message posted on its website on Monday, the hosting provider said some customer accounts were hacked and data locked by hackers.
At the same time, SmarterASP.NET noted that it had found a solution to the problem, but did not reveal whether it involved paying a ransom or restoring customer data from backups.
“We now have a solution to resolve this problem. However, we need time to fix your account. Please stay tuned, we will provide more updates as we are recovering your account right now,” the company said.
The company claims to have recovered over 95% of the affected accounts, but, given the large number of customers the company has, it might still take several days before the service is fully restored for all those affected.
Some of the company’s customers took to Twitter to express their discontent on suffering downtime from the incident, and some even said they were already looking for a different provider.
Some of those who have already regained access to their data say their databases have been restored without data loss.
SmarterASP.NET is the third hosting provider to have been hit by ransomware over the past weeks. A2 Hosting and iNSYNC were also impacted.
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