Shoestring Solutions

June Server Uptime: 99.82%

admin — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:15:42 +0000

If you are looking for reliable, exclusive web hosting with personalized support from U.S.-based technicians, contact us today. We have an affordable hosting plan for you.

Planned Server Maintenance 4/19

admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:52:25 +0000

The server racks in the Datacenter in which our server is housed are being reorganized to better utilize available power. The following maintenance window has been scheduled to complete the upgrade:

April 19th, 2010 @ 2:00am (EST). Expected duration: 1-2 hours

During this period, Shoestring-hosted web sites and services will be offline and unavailable. The outage will include web sites and email services including Google Apps email via custom domains.

If you have any questions about the scheduled maintenance period, please contact us.

FDIC: Hackers Took More Than $120M In Three Months

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:20:14 +0000

Cyber crime scams targeting small businesses cost U.S. companies $25 million in Q3 of 2009, said the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation this week. Since the Zeus trojan is on the loose and is much more prevalent now than 6 months ago, it’s easy to predict that this kind of cyber theft is going to be much more in 2010. You HAVE to have layered defenses to prevent this kind of crime.

David Nelson, an examination specialist with the FDIC said that almost all of the incidents reported to the FDIC were “related to malware on online banking customers’ PCs.” Usually an employee in accounting is ‘social engineered’ into going to malicious site or downloading a Trojan horse program that gives hackers access to their banking passwords. Money is then stolen out of the business account using the Automated Clearing House system that banks use to transmit payments.

The first thing I would do is talk to accounting specifically, and perhaps even dedicate a PC to JUST banking and nothing else. You have to have end-user training in place as well as the usual layers of firewalls, anti-malware, patching, and several others. And make sure they are all updated and that definitions are being downloaded consistently.

(Hat tip: www.wservernews.com)

‘Kneber’ Botnet Attacks PCs Worldwide

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:14:35 +0000

Always practice safe computing:

Netwitness says Kneber is a ZeuS Trojan botnet, a type of botnet known for its capability to target and steal key information stored on your computer, such as login credentials.

‘Kneber’ Botnet Attacks PCs Worldwide: FAQ – PCWorld

Google Launches Public DNS

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:04:18 +0000

When you type that “www…” into your browser, a series of transactions occur to bring that web page to your computer. One of the first steps is that your request for a URL goes to a domain name server (usually provided by your service provider). The DNS server matches your “www…” with a unique Internet Protocol (IP) number, which is assigned to every computer connected to the Internet. Your page request is then routed to the correct server.

Google’s Public DNS claims to speed up this initial communication. Our testing indicates that Google’s service is indeed faster than other DNS servers including OpenDNS, another public offering.

If you’re a “safe surfer” you might want to give the Google DNS a shot. For content filtering on your family network, you can’t beat OpenDNS and Google’s speed isn’t reason enough to switch. It will be interesting to see if Google adds filtering to its DNS service.

Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Public DNS