..:: hacked! ::..

Today was a crazy day. Someone hacked the hosting server where my companies web site is hosted and attempted to use our server as a spambot to mail out their filthy spam messages to poor unsuspecting guys and gals around the world.

The evil little parasite snuck in through a 'hole' in our software somewhere, deposited a bunch of spam garbage into our server hosting space and then attempted to blast a bunch of messages out using our mail server. The tech team that monitors the servers usage (our site is hosted with a third party company) noticed the exploit and shut down (froze-up) our email capabilities, which made my afternoon a headache-and-a-half.

The manager of the reservations department in my office was upset (understandably so) because he wasn't getting any of our online reservations. And I was working furiously to get all of our email passwords changed, and all of our potential security holes plugged so that the hosting company would clear our email server account to go active again.

Although it was a bit of a disaster, I tried not to get too shook up about it. I mean I was upset that some nasty little parasite spammer hacked our account, and that obviously made me feel more vulnerable than I did prior to today's mishap. But as far as the stress of trying to get us back online again... in a situation like that, you do what you can do as efficiently as you can, and the rest... you just have to let it roll, like water off a ducks back. You know what I mean?

One thing I do find a bit annoying, but mostly just hilarious is the way that "customer support" at the hosting companies, much like "customer support" in virtually every other industry in America seems to have little to no interest in actually providing any support to the customer. Their primary goal seems to be to sit back, do as little actual work as possible, collect their hourly rate , and offer vague rationalizations to whatever problem their customers are facing, and to point their finger at anything or anyone else other then themselves as both the problem and the cure to the issue. I really don't even know why they are there, much less why I still call them when there is a problem. I guess it just makes me feel better to be able to tell someone that there is a problem, even though I know that they are not going to do a thing about it.