Web hosting provider SmarterASP.NET affected by ransomware attack.

On November 12, 2019, the popular web hosting provider, SmarterASP.NET, revealed that a ransomware attack affected the hosted websites of its customers. SmarterASP.NET’s website was also offline for a day, but it was able to restore services in 24 hours.

The incident.

SmarterASP.net is the third-largest web hosting provider with over 440,000 customers. Even after the attack was revealed, the company did not provide details regarding the ransom demand or its strategy for recovering from the attack. According to an announcement on its website, "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."

According to a ZDNet report, the customer files were encrypted by a version of the Snatch ransomware variant. Customers took to Twitter to complain about the lack of communication from the company. As per SmarterASP.NET's latest tweet, "We will focus on recover the database servers first. Once that's recovered, most of your sites will be up and running already. You will also be able to make DB backup right away on our control panel."

Cybersecurity threats are everywhere, and it's important for organizations to be prepared. If you want to avoid disasters like these, invest in a tool like ManageEngine's DataSecurity Plus that can secure your data and mitigate ransomware attacks. Download a 30-day, free trial of DataSecurity Plus today.