http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:01:35 CDT http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php?id=5 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 CDT It’s been a tough week for the large webmail providers such as GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Comcast, Earthlink, as they report up to 30,000 (and counting) email addresses and passwords were hi-jacked and posted online. Although some of the accounts on the list appeared to be old, unused or incorrect, many have been confirmed as genuine. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are continuing to advise users to change their passwords if they think their account has been compromised. It should be noted that none of Synx3 webmail systems has been hacked or exploited. The majority of webmail systems are secure; they have been run successfully for years without major security breaches. Most security experts suspect the account details were collated using phishing attacks. However, the scale of the problem has led some to believe that key-logging malware could be to blame. Unfortunately, the problem has become self-propagating and account breaches could increase exponentially. Online security company Websence has identified a sharp increase in the number of spam emails being sent from GMail, Hotmail, and Yahoo accounts. Hackers and cyber-criminals are using them to send further phishing emails to real address book contacts. Is there a solution? User education will obviously help but, for inexperienced clients, perhaps you could consider installing a standard POP3/IMAP email client on your PC such as Outlook, Thunderbird, or Entourage for the Mac. This will help in reducing your chances of exposing your password online and risking possible hacking or exploitation of your account. We also encourage users to occasionaly check for and remove spyware, malware from their computer systems as these could be to blame. If you do not have an Anti-Spyware program we recommend you download the free version of http://www.superantispyware.com Furthermore, we encourage users to be extra cautious when clicking on links within an email, even if it's from a trusted contact as their email account may have been hi-jacked. A good rule to remember is, if the contents of an email looks strange, or you feel something doesn't look or feel right, you should probably flag the email as spam and immediately delete the email. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us and we will be happy to assist you. http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php?id=6 Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 CDT At Synx3 we certainly recognize that uptime is the most important aspect of your hosting service. Throughout this morning we have been experiencing an extremely large and malicious traffic flood directed at our Cloud Hosting infrastructure. This distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack caused networking connectivity issues to our environment.  This resulted in some sites loading slowly or not resolving at all. After identifying the DDoS attack, we acted immediately and engaged our DDoS mitigation solution which began isolating the attack and blocking the malicious traffic. We continue to closely monitor the DDoS attack as it has unfortunately continued through today. Please know that we are doing everything possible to prevent disruption in service.  Once again, we thank you for your understanding, and apologize for this inconvenience. Please contact us if you have any further questions or concerns regarding this issue. http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php?id=4 Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:00:00 CDT Maintenance is complete and all servers are up and running without issues to report. Some servers required a reboot, and, although minimal, some customer websites and emails bacame unavailable during this period. We have been closely monitoring all servers and everything is normal. If you have any issues to report please contact us. http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php?id=3 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 CDT As part of our commitment to continue to provide quality and reliable webhosting services, we are scheduling a maintenance for all servers. For some servers this may require a reboot but the downtime will be very minimal. During the maintenance period you may experience a brief moment when your website may not be availble on the web. This maintenance period will also affect sending and receiving emails. Maintenance Date: Friday, October 9, 2009 Maintenance Time: Beginning at 5:00pm PST We will available during this maintenance period via our support system to answer any of your questions and/or concerns. We will post an update on our announcement page when the maintenance is finalized. http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php?id=2 Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:00:00 CDT We would like to alert you to an exploit in a major piece of PHP software that many users are running here and on other providers. There is a security threat that is affecting WordPress versions prior to 2.8.4. Failure to upgrade to the current version may result in a compromise of the security of your site.  We urge you to upgrade your WordPress sites to v.2.8.4 as soon as possible, as WordPress is recommending. For additional information, please see: http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/  This is not an issue with our hosting services but rather an issue with the 3rd party service, Wordpress. If you require any assistance upgrading to the newest version please let us know by submitting a support ticket here and we'll be able to help. http://vip.synx3.com/announcements.php?id=1 Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 CDT We are excited to announce that we have begun working on an array of exciting new changes to Synx3. All to make your user experience with us a more pleasant one. We wont get into details but we are working on a new design for our site, new branding rework, services, and more... Stay tuned!