In October, Fasthosts said it had discovered evidence of a net-work intrusion involving one of its servers. As a precaution, partners were asked to help specific customers update control panel, FTP and email passwords.
However, resellers were called into action again on 30 November, after Fasthosts emailed them late
on 29 November, informing them that a number of customers who did not change their passwords had suffered compromises.
Fasthosts said it had reset the passwords of affected customers and details would follow by Royal Mail.
Darren Bush, managing director of Fasthosts partner Tandem Software, said: “We received many calls from clients within the first hour [of Friday] that were unable to access certain services until we manually reset passwords.
“If this security measure had been advised [earlier] on Thursday, we could have made changes during
the day and our clients would
not have been affected.”
Bush added: “At no time have we received an apology from any board-level staff at Fasthosts. Neither have we been offered compensation for the hours of work this will cause us and many more dealers for correcting issues caused by Fasthosts’ lapse of security.”
Fasthosts sent a statement to CRN apologising for the inconvenience, but failed to address partner requests for compensation.
“Fasthosts would like to apologise once again for the inconvenience to its resellers affected by the recent password change,” it read. “The measures were necessary to ensure our customers’, and just as importantly, our resellers’ end customers’ websites and data were secure.”
Fasthosts said it was working closely with resellers and had ensured they were prioritised for receiving their new passwords by Royal Mail. All partners affected should have received their letter by last Tuesday, it stressed.
“We also conducted proactive calls and emails to our resellers over this period to provide them with their new passwords and assistance as swiftly as possible,” Fasthosts added.
Fasthosts changes user passwords after hack