Dark Web hosting provider Daniel’s Hosting (DH) was hacked a few days ago with more than 6500 websites deleted by its perpetrators. The site that was sitting on the hidden Tor (The Onion Router) network had its server’s root account eradicated, with its web data lost for good.
According to Daniel Winzen, the software developer behind the web hosting service, hackers gained entry into the database to erase all records. He said that since there was no recovery mechanism, all the information that was lost can no longer be recuperated.
On analyzing the situation, Winzen said that he examined the log documents and found that hackers have accessed a few records and documents that led to further miscreations, but the original point of entry has not yet been detected. He also said that till the time the vulnerability is found, DH will not re-enable their systems.
Winzen says that Daniel’s Hosting served a variety of material which includes fan fiction, philosophy, political tracts, hacked files, web marketplaces, porn etc. He said that as of now, he is looking for a source through all these streams which can lead him to the vulnerability.
For now, Winzen says that he has recognized only one blemish in PHP- a scripting language for web development. However, he is convinced that this can’t be the route hackers would have taken to gain access into the system.
As per Winzen, since dark web hosting services have been majorly used to host everything from malware operations to political blogs, the list of suspects who might have hacked into Daniel’s systems could have possibly been from this segment itself e.g. rival cyber-gangs, nation and state hackers, etc. He also suspects that since DH service’s source code has always been open sourced on GitHub, miscreants might have gotten a deep insight into its hacking.
In closing, the dark web hosting provider said that their site should be back into action from the month of December. It will be interesting to see how events unfold for DH, following the launch of cyber security tools like ‘Threat Monitoring’ by UKFast.