Yep. Looks like we're in good company. Maybe it's not North Korea coming after us . . then again, WHO KNOWS who the bad guys really are?
A hacker (or HACKERS) brought us to our knees this week. I was blissfully unaware that we've been under attack since Christmas. But during the past week, the attack was accelerated severely. I only found out when our data center delivered an invoice for $34,000 that must be paid "TODAY". That happened Monday.
Cough. Choke. Hack. WHAT???
After a little snooping around I discovered "somebody" has been stealing our bandwidth. WOW, did they ever STEAL. More than 80 TERABYTES of bandwidth was stolen, mostly in the past week. Most people don't realize that EVERY company providing web software (you know, like Google Hangouts, Skype, Voifone, etc.) has to PAY for all the bandwidth used. It's NOT free. It's just like the data plans on your cell phones (except at wholesale pricing). The more we use, the more we pay. So when somebody uses OUR bandwidth for their own nefarious purpose, WE have to pay. It's THEFT, plain and simple. And it comes right out of our pocket.
At first they were only hitting our Voifone server. But then they discovered our brand new Voimeet server. No WONDER the Voimeet tests were going badly. The HACKERS sucked up 100% of the processor power, RAM and bandwidth, leaving NOTHING to run our services. Then, I discovered our CRM was just crawling along. WHY? Once again, hackers had invaded.
On Friday, we hired an Israeli cyber security expert. He was able to snake into our system, discover the offending software and KILL IT. But it wasn't easy. He said this was one of the most sophisticated hack jobs he has seen.
What's even more bizarre is that on the same day we were killing the bad-guy-software, our main bank account came under attack. Somebody had issued checks for $2000 on our bank account - where "I" am the only signer - and sent them to several, seemingly random people across the USA, and they were received on the same day. Friday, those several people went to their bank to see if this check - that just came out of "nowhere" - was legit. It was on OUR bank account. OF COURSE it wasn't legit. So the bank called me, we immediately ordered our account frozen and closed it. We have re-opened a new bank account. The attack failed.
Of course all this has led to some serious problems. As of this writing, Voifone is completely offline. Our company CRM is "down". Development is halted on Voimeet. Many financial transactions must be unwound or changed now. We took down the Voifone server before we located our cyber security specialist to stop the attack and simply turned off the others. We have a new server online now for Voifone and it's being re-configured. Service should be restored within a few days.
You can bet our servers are now far more bullet-proof than before. Access is severely restricted. Tight protocols are in place. We're hoping these more secure measures will foil the future attempts against us. Of course I can't say "WHAT" we have done but I can assure you, we now have extreme protection against cyber criminals in the future.
Same goes for our bank accounts.
So. It has been an interesting week to say the least. I'll get back with you soon. There's a lot of good news on the near-term horizon!
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