Core Router - Wednesday, April 14 2010
This afternoon at approximately 2:30 EDT the core router at the Orlando data center we utilize went out causing all sites and services on those servers (including this one) to go down.

The router has been replaced and is currently being configured. Sites will start to appear over the next several hours.

We apologize for the issue.

UPDATE: The router is still being tweaked and routing being established for those sites with dedicated IP addresses. Most sites should be up at this point. The control panel is currently down. If you are having issues with your particular site please send an email to support@scoutwebservices.com

Serious Exploit - Gumblar Speading - Monday, June 1 2009
Dear Customers,

Please be advised that there is currently a serious security vulnerability in Adobe products which could affect your website hosting. This exploit has affected many popular commercial sites already and is spreading quickly.

If you are not running the most recently patched versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Flash Player you are at risk for compromising your web sites. A recently discovered vulnerability in this software which runs locally on your computer can lead to malware stealing your FTP credentials with the potential for much more. This poses a significant security risk to your server and web sites, leading to attackers using client FTP credentials to deface web sites and insert malicious code which can exploit things further. Below is a description of the risk from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

Here are two quick links to update your versions:

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Please be sure that you are up to date with good antivirus software on your local computer. We also highly suggest that you proactively change your control panel and FTP passwords immediately. This can be done by logging into your control panel and choosing the "Change Password" icon. Be sure to check the box to change the FTP password also. Passwords should be strong with at least 8 characters including CAPITAL, lowercase and numerals.

If you discover by surfing any of your web sites that they have been affected, please enter a support ticket and our team can help to mitigate any damage done.

Information as published on: http://www.us-cert.gov/current/

Gumblar Malware Exploit Circulating
added May 18, 2009 at 12:47 pm

US-CERT is aware of public reports of a malware exploit circulating. This is a drive-by-download exploit with multiple stages and is being referred to as Gumblar. The first stage of this exploit attempts to compromise legitimate websites by injecting malicious code into them. Reports indicate that these website infections occur primarily through stolen FTP credentials but may also be compromised through poor configuration settings, vulnerable web applications, etc. The second stage of this exploit occurs when users visit a website compromised by Gumblar. Users who visit these compromised websites and have not applied updates for known PDF and Flash Player vulnerabilities may become infected with malware. This malware may be used by attackers to monitor network traffic and obtain sensitive information, including FTP and login credentials, that can be used to conduct further exploits. Additionally, this malware may also redirect Google search results for the infected user.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to apply software updates in a timely manner and use up-to-date antivirus software to help mitigate the risks.

US-CERT will provide additional information as it becomes available

Gumblar Exploit Threat - Monday, May 18 2009
We have seen several customers hit by this expoit of their website. We suggest you read this article and follow their suggestions. http://news.softpedia.com/news/Gumblar-Exploit-is-the-Most-Prevalent-Web-Threat-111701.shtml

SiteStudio Server - Friday, May 1 2009
We have had a major issue with the SiteStudio server and it is currently offline. This should not affect current published sites but access only to the SiteStudio tool.

We are working on the issue and have contacted the developer to get the system back online and to recover the data. However, the system will more than likely stay offline until Monday.

Update: Still off-line at this point. Trying to figure out options at this point.

Update 5/5: The damage included the hard drive. We have sent the drive out to see if they can recover any data off it. Our hopes is that data can be recovered and user accounts can be restored. This process will take some time and we can't, at this point, guarentee it will work. I wish we had better news at this point, but that is where we stand.

Update 5/12 - Customers on the affected cluster were sent an email on this situation. If you did not receive an email today, please submit a support ticket in your control panel.

Emergency Control Panel Maintenance - Monday, November 17 2008
The hosting control panel is currently down and will be down until tomorrow morning. Sluggish speed over the past weeks continues so a complete vacuum of the database is in process. This takes several hours as the database integrity is checked and then obsolete records are purged.

This will not affect individual sites, only access to the control panel.

Thank you for your patience during this time. If you need assistance during this time you can send an email to support as the ticket system is integrated into the control panel and will not be functioning.

Webmail Upgrade - Saturday, May 24 2008
We have recently upgraded the webmail system on our servers. This new version should give us more reliability and faster response.

This upgrade has broken the interface within the control panel to auto-login to each email account webmail interface. We're working on a work around to keep this feature active.

Mail Service Downtime for SPAM Filtering Hardware - Wednesday, April 23 2008
Starting at 2:00 a.m. EDT on April 25th all mail service will be down for approximately 30 minutes as a new spam firewall appliance is installed in the network. This filter system, Barracuda Networks will be utilized to filter OUTGOING mail first for SPAM. The settings will be gentle to begin with and slowly increased to ensure we are not blocking legitimate outbound mail. This will only affect email servers with IP starting with 216.

As some of you are aware, providers such as Comcast and ATT are increasingly agressive with spam and have blocked our servers (without notification) causing mail delivery issues. In investigating these issue we've discovered most of them are based on email forwarders setup by our customers to their comcast/att/bellsouth accounts. When spam goes to the forwarder it currently gets forwarded without filtering. This then flags our servers as spam providers as we are named in the server chain of delivery of the mail.

We've evaluated several option including eliminating forwarders, however we feel this is a better approach that still allows us to offer an important service to our customers.

Control Panel Downtime - Monday, November 26 2007
The maintenance on the control panel was not fully completed last night. The control panel will again be down tonight starting at 11:00 p.m. EST to finish things up.

Thank you for your patience during this time.

Control Panel Maintenance - Thursday, November 22 2007
On Sunday, November 25th starting at 11:00 pm EST the control panel will go down for several hours for maintenance. This will not affect individual sites, only access to the control panel itself.

Control Panel Trouble Ticket System - Tuesday, October 2 2007
We are currently experiencing issues with our internal Trouble Ticket support system. If you need assistance, just send an email to our support team at support( at ) scoutwebservices.com