Between 9:45 PM and 10:05 PM Pacific time June 2, the “web01” server (which also hosts our own www.tigertech.net Web site) stopped responding normally due to a Linux kernel problem, leading to some sites and mail accounts on the server being unavailable during this period.
The server was restarted and is now operating normally. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this caused.
Between 10:00 PM and 10:59 PM Pacific time Wednesday May 22, 2013, the “web05” and “web07” servers will be restarted. This will cause an eight minute interruption of service for each server at some point during this hour.
The PHP developers have announced the release of versions 5.3.25 and 5.4.15 that fix several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3 and 5.4 on our servers as a result.
We’ve also updated the ionCube Loader PHP extension (which most of our customers don’t use) from version 4.2.2 to version 4.4.0.
These changes should be transparent to customers. In the unlikely event you experience any issues, don’t hesitate to let us know.
The “web04” server experienced extremely high load for several minutes beginning at 8:00 AM Pacific time on May 9. Sites on this server were slow or unavailable as a result.
Several people have asked us about the recent WordPress WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache plugin security vulnerability.
For the most part, sites hosted on our servers aren’t vulnerable to this because we block comments that contain the malicious code.
We’ve talked before about WordPress login rate limiting. Attempts to guess WordPress administrator passwords are an ongoing problem, getting worse all the time.
The average WordPress site we host has received tens of thousands of malicious login attempts this month, with hundreds of thousands of different IP addresses being used in the attacks. We try to block the IP addresses that are responsible, but the ever increasing number of addresses means we can’t block all of them — an individual address often attempts a login only once a day for a given site. We need to adopt other tactics.
The PHP developers have announced the release of version 5.3.22 that fixes several bugs. We’ve upgraded PHP 5.3.21 to version 5.3.22 on our servers as a result.
In addition, we now offer PHP version 5.4.12 as an optional choice in our control panel. For now, the PHP 5.4 series is recommended only for customers who need to test “cutting edge” features. Most customers should stick with the PHP 5.3 series, which is compatible with a wider variety of scripts.
There was a brief but severe performance problem on the web12 server today between 9:59 and 10:07 AM Pacific time. During this time, many Web server requests were very slow to load or even “timed out” completely. All services are now operating normally again. Other servers were not affected.
Between 11:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time February 26, 2013, each of our servers will be restarted for a “kernel upgrade”. This will cause an approximately four minute interruption of service for each customer at some point during this hour.
Earlier today, Twitter user @adam_baldwin mentioned finding a security flaw on our site. He reported this to us (thanks!) and we fixed it, then another Twitter user @mattmcgee asked what it was. It helps everyone on the Internet be transparent about security, so here’s an attempt at an explanation.
