Hackers target firm protecting against denial of service attacks
Staminus was not only taken down, but apparently lost control of sensitive data.
When you dedicate your company to protecting against hacks, you make yourself a bigger target for those hacks... and one firm is learning this the hard way. Staminus, an online hosting service that focuses on protecting against distributed denial of service attacks, was the victim of an apparently giant hack last week. In addition to going offline until Thursday night, the company has confirmed that the intruders took customer data that includes payment card info, user names and (thankfully hashed) passwords. The perpetrators claim to have hijacked and reset the majority of Staminus' routers.
As for who did it and why? It's not entirely clear, but it may be the result of political activism or an attempt to call Staminus out on the carpet for lax security. The outfit counts the KKK as one of its anti-DDoS customers, and it apparently made rookie mistakes like storing card info in plain text and using the same password for all its routers. Whatever the causes, users can at least take consolation that Staminus is toughening up its security -- hopefully, it (and other anti-hacking specialists) won't fall victim to this kind of attack again.
