Hosting provider Argeweb asks his customers for passwords of ftp accounts and portal to change. Someone would have broken on the network where Argeweb is connected. The provider emphasizes that it is a precaution.
A customer of Argeweb says to Tweakers.net Friday morning by the provider to be called with the request to have some passwords to change. Director Gerben van Leeuwen of Argeweb confirms that. Customers are currently being informed about the possible security issue; later on Friday, follows an official statement. “It’s really a precaution,” says Van Leeuwen.
The attack took place when a customer of Amsio, the company that manages the network involving, inter alia, Argeweb is connected. Van Leeuwen does not want to say which customer it is, but: “It’s a small customer. You know him not.” Amsio and Argeweb together form a holding company. Argeweb provides shared hosting, while at Amsio vps services and the network of the two companies manages.
“The attack happened Wednesday night. Thursday morning came, Fox-IT along with a team of five men to the incident to investigate,” says Van Leeuwen. The hosting provider may not exclude that in the attack table with passwords of all Argeweb – and Amsio-customers is approached. “It comes to encrypted passwords, but our policy is that in this case, all passwords must be changed”, says the director.
At Argeweb include the password of the customer portal, where users can log in to, for example, administrative tasks, and of the ftp account. The customer portal passwords to be changed automatically, but the ftp passwords have to users have to be manually adjusted. By default, the ftp-password is the password for e-mail and the database, which in many cases also need to be adjusted. To Amsio’s customers are the passwords of their vps-accounts will be automatically changed.
Van Leeuwen says the fact that the case in the media. “I hope that no panic is sown,” he says. “Probably we will come across a few days to the conclusion that this would not have been necessary.”
If there are a security vulnerability, then the impact is major; Argeweb is one of the largest hosting providers in the Netherlands, three data centers and 137,500 domain names under management.