Hosting with Network Solutions? Your Site May be Hacked
If you’re website is hosted with Network Solutions you’ll want to check it immediately to see if it has been hacked. During the month of April 2010 Network Solution servers have been twice hacked into and malicious code has been installed on some of their client’s sites.
Computerworld has done a more extensive article on the situation here. Network Solutions isn’t saying what the vulnerability is which leaves us guessing that it has yet to be fixed.
From a business owner’s perspective their are two ways that this can be damaging. First of all, there is lost trust with clients. What’s happening (in at least some cases) is that the hackers are redirecting these sites to a site that infects the visitor’s computer with a virus. Once your client has to go through the hassle of cleaning up their computer and maybe some expense in doing so, how soon do you think they’ll want to visit your site again?
The second way that your site can be hurt is that if there is malware on your hacked site, Google may block your site from its index or mark it in its index as being infected by malware. Left untreated your site could lose its rankings. Google does have a process for getting the site reevaluated, but who needs the headache.
If you’re on Network Solutions and you’ve been hacked and you didn’t get notified of the problem, it’s probably worth contacting their customer support to ask why you weren’t alerted to the situation.