Hundreds of thousands of Web sites - including several at the United Nations and in the U.K. government — have been hacked recently and seeded with code that tries to exploit security flaws in Microsoft Windows to install malicious software on visitors’ machines.

The attackers appear to be breaking into the sites with the help of a security vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Web servers. In an alert issued last week, Microsoft said it was investigating reports of an unpatched flaw in IIS servers, but at the time it noted that it wasn’t aware of anyone trying to exploit that particular weakness.

On Thursday, Spanish anti-virus vendor Panda Security said that it had alerted Microsoft that a flaw IIS was the cause of all the break-ins. When I asked Microsoft whether they’d heard from Panda or if the hundreds of thousands of sites were hacked from a patched or unpatched flaw in IIS, a spokesman for the company didn’t offer much more information.

According to Finnish anti-virus maker F-Secure, the number of hacked Web pages serving up malicious software from this attack may be closer to half a million.

“The attacks are facilitated by SQL injection exploits and are not issues related to IIS 6.0, ASP, ASP.Net, or Microsoft SQL technologies,” said Bill Sisk, a communications manager at Microsoft, in a blog post. “SQL injection attacks enable malicious users to execute commands in an application’s database.”

Sisk said that to defend against SQL injection attacks, developers should follow secure coding practices.

SQL injection attacks involve insufficiently filtered code submitted to SQL databases through user input mechanisms.

On Friday, U.S. CERT issued a warning about SQL injection attacks that have compromised a large number of legitimate Web sites. Affected Web sites contain injected JavaScript that attempts to exploit several known vulnerabilities. U.S. CERT recommends disabling JavaScript and ActiveX.

Webhosting company, Resellers Panel, in celebration of its fifth anniversary in business, has debuted major upgrades to its hosting platform, including a new file manager, multi-currency billing solution, and multi-store functionality solution.

In addition to the default store, resellers have the opportunity to create up to three more, entirely independent of each other, free reseller web hosting stores, configured according to their specific marketing strategies. They can get a unique domain name, choose a different website template and activate a separate DNS cluster for each of the stores, which will drive brand recognition and significantly increase their reseller anonymity.

The new multi-currency billing solution, on the other hand, gives the resellers the possibility to offer web hosting and domain registration services in the five most widely used online transaction currencies and directly address the demands of a particular target audience or a specific local market.

This special Resellers Panel anniversary coincides also with the introduction of several important updates to Resellers Panel platform, such as a new file manager, which will enable the clients to handle the content of their websites more easily and efficiently, and new multi-store and multi-currency options, which will dramatically expand the marketing reach of the resellers themselves.

The new file manager, which has been integrated in the web hosting control panel, boasts an entirely new, easy to navigate user-friendly interface. Beside the ability to manage multiple files and folders at once, the users now have an unprecedented opportunity to edit their files using a WYSIWYG editor and to view the changes they are making directly in a web browser in real time.

The new Resellers Panel file manager also gives the clients the opportunity for the first time to upload .zip, .rar, .tar.gz and .gz archived files and folders, which are being automatically unpacked in the selected directory, and visually keep track of the process by means of a progress bar. Pop-up tooltips, which contain essential information about a given file or folder and display the actions that can be performed on them, self-evident file type icons and image file thumbnails have been introduced as well.

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The Planet privately held dedicated hosting company, has added an automated recovery solution, which is now available on all of its new and existing servers within the company’s extensive offerings.

The Automated Rescue Environment (ARE) allows customers to self-restore and repair their servers directly from The Planet customer portal in the event of a critical software failure.

Urvish Vashi, Director of Product Management with The Planet noted, ”The hosted IT infrastructure provides significant cost savings for customers compared with a do-it-yourself approach, an even more important factor in challenging financial markets. Many of our more technically proficient customers have asked for direct management capabilities, so for these companies we want to provide the option of unfettered access. As always, our skilled technical support team is available 24×7x365 for all of our customers.”

ARE enables customers with the option to self-manage their servers in the event of a system crash or failure. By rebooting from a safe zone on The Planet’s network, customers simply download a light OS, which provides the necessary tools to diagnose and recover data. The ARE:

• Allows customers to safely diagnose configuration errors without resorting to data losses associated with reloading the operating system
• Provides a significant self-service advantage so that customers can recover deleted files, replace corrupt files, manage and backup data, and remove harmful programs in a safe mode
• Adds additional value to The Planet’s hosted solution by providing the ability to self-restore and manage servers.

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Web hosting firm, HostMySite, has redesigned its website, with strong focus on managed dedicated servers and VPS hosting, the culmination of several months of internal and outside design and development work.

The new HostMySite website presents web hosting solutions to four key audience segments: personal website creators, professional developers and designers, small business website owners, and those needing enterprise scale hosting solutions. The site also builds on the strong markets that HostMySite has served in managed dedicated servers and VPS hosting. The managed dedicated sections of the website have been updated to present a complete online data center tour, vastly increased detail on the dedicated server offerings at HostMySite and tools for determining which dedicated server solutions best match a client’s needs.

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Domain registrar and Web hosting provider Go Daddy (godaddy.com) announced on Wednesday that it has declared April 29 “Webmasters’ Day” (godaddy.com/webmastersday), which recognizes professionals responsible for the content on websites across the world.

Did you know there’s a day for honoring newspaper carriers? It’s September 4. There’s also Cartoonists’ Day (May 3), Doctors’ Day (March 30) AND Hairstylists’ Appreciation Day (April 30). So why shouldn’t there be a Webmasters’ Day?

On April 29, GoDaddy.com will send out special eCards thanking Webmasters around the globe for their tireless efforts to keep us all up and running. To make sure your Webmaster gets thanked on Webmasters’ Day, send an eCard now.

Go Daddy says it wanted to recognize the importance of Web masters by officially honoring these professionals with their own celebratory day. According to the press release, “if newspaper carriers, cartoonists, doctors and hairstylists all have their own day, it’s time for Web masters to receive the same recognition.”

We at Customer Hosting Reviews appreciate the effort on behalf of GoDaddy. Excellent idea. Finally, a holiday I can take seriously!

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