Having Technical Difficulties

Over the past two weeks, we have had a rash of server problems and hacks, none of which is our fault. The short and skinny of this post is to tell you that my internet at home has more or less blocked me from my own websites so I’m unable to post from there (Im currently posting this from work). I’ll try to keep posting from work when I can, but in the mean time please bare with me while I hate on technology. For a more detailed explanation of the problem, read on…..

As I stated, our server and websites have been hacked THREE TIMES in the last few  weeks (DAMN RUSSIANS!!!!). They somehow gained direct access to the server itself and treated themselves to a field day with our site files. More specifically, the rewrote the main index.php file. Not only did they hack our sites, but every single site that shares the same server as us.

Thankfully, I was able to correct the problem swiftly each time. However I can’t say the same about our hosting company (Icestorm). Two days after the last hack, the server went down completely and since then we’ve been, for the most part, blocked from our own sites form our own internet.

Here’s the gist of the current problem….
Everyone can see our websites so they are up and functional. However, if we go to our sites through our home router we are unable to load them the sites. Nor can we load (or even ping) any sites that are on the same server as us nor the same IP address. We don’t have any proxies or crazy firewalls…. very basic setup. So we renewed our IP address and changed it to static; didn’t work. Our more recent step was to reset the router completely and set it back up from scratch; didn’t work.  All the while… keep in mind that if we plug in directly to the modem, everything works fine. Not to mention we checked all the obvious things like removing cache from our browsers, unplugging everything (30+mins), making sure there wasn’t any blocked IP’s in the systems or in the router, and upgraded the router’s firmware.
Additionally…. this all happened shortly after our sites got hacked, came back up, and then the server itself crashed; This past Thursday. Every since then… we’ve been up shit creek but everyone else seems to be fine.

So… whatever the problem is… its in the router. But we have no freakin clue what it is. At this point, Im looking into other hosting companies and plan on just moving our sites completely. Ive had a lot of problems with IceStorm and am ready to get the hell out from under them.

If you think you can help, by all means, let me know.

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Posted by Chris
http://www.chrisrhoad.com/bio/