We’ve upgraded our Apache Web server software to fix the security bug CVE-2016-8743.
Customers should not notice any changes, with one exception: If you’ve written your own software, and that software contains certain bugs that haven’t previously been noticed, the update may cause the bugs to be more visible.
Between 9:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Friday, February 24, 2017, the MySQL database software on each of our servers will be restarted. This will cause an approximately 60 second interruption of service on each MySQL-using customer Web site at some point during this period.
This is necessary for security and stability reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
Update 9:49 PM Pacific time: The maintenance was completed as planned and all services are running normally.
Between 9:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Friday, February 3, 2017, the MySQL database software on each of our servers will be upgraded from version 5.5.53 to 5.5.54. This will cause an approximately 60 second interruption of service on each MySQL-using customer Web site at some point during this period.
This upgrade is necessary for security reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
Update 9:44 PM Pacific time: The maintenance was completed as planned and all services are running normally.
Many scripts that send e-mail include a file called PHPMailer. The file is distributed as part of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and lots more software.
Recently, a security researcher discovered a security bug in PHPMailer. The bug could allow “hackers” to take over a website.
However, sites hosted on our servers are not vulnerable to this problem. (Despite that, you should always update your copy of WordPress, Joomla, or any other software when there’s a new version available.)
The authors of the Joomla software announced that Joomla versions 1.6.0 through 3.6.4 have a critical security bug that allows “hackers” to take over a site (CVE-2016-9838).
The best solution for Joomla users is to update to version 3.6.5 immediately. However, we also added a security rule to our servers this evening to block this attack, based on an initial analysis.
The rule works by blocking attempts to register new Joomla users that contain certain kinds of invalid data; it allows only “expected” data. This could mean that if you’ve modified your Joomla user registration page in some unusual way, it might be incorrectly blocked. We’ll keep an eye out for this potential problem; don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any trouble.
Between 9:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Friday, November 18, 2016, the MySQL database software on each of our servers will be upgraded from version 5.5.52 to 5.5.53. This will cause an approximately 60 second interruption of service on each MySQL-using customer Web site at some point during this period.
This upgrade is necessary for security reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
Update 9:43 PM Pacific time: The maintenance was completed as planned and all services are running normally.
The authors of the Joomla software announced that Joomla versions 3.4.4 through 3.6.3 have a critical security bug that allows “hackers” to take over a site by adding new administrative users (CVE-2016-8869).
The best solution for Joomla users is to update to version 3.6.4 immediately. However, we also added a rule to our servers this morning to block this attack. The rule should ensure that if you use our hosting service, hackers won’t be able to take advantage of this bug.
(And a tip o’ the hat to security researcher Melvin Lammerts, who published detailed technical information of the bug that allowed us to do this more quickly than usual.)
Between 10:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Tuesday, October 25 2016, each of our hosting servers will be restarted. This will cause a brief interruption of service (less than 5 minutes) for each site at some point during this 2 hour period.
We’re receiving reports that some people visiting some SSL sites (including our site) are seeing security errors saying a “certificate has been revoked”.
This is an Internet-wide problem caused by an issue with one of the main Internet “certificate issuers”, a company called GlobalSign, and isn’t specific to us or sites we host. It’s affected many large Internet sites, such as Wikipedia. (Internet news site “The Register” has a report here.)
GlobalSign says the problem will soon be fixed. In the meantime, if your browser allows you to “click past” the warning about a “revoked certificate”, it is safe to do so.
Update 3:13 PM Pacific time: The problem is slowly resolving itself as the bad certificate information expires from “caches” around the Internet, but we’ve temporarily replaced our SSL certificates with new ones to make it stop immediately. This problem should now be resolved.
Between 9:00 PM and 11:59 PM Pacific time on Sunday, September 18, 2016, the MySQL database software on each of our servers will be upgraded from version 5.5.50 to 5.5.52. This will cause an approximately 60 second interruption of service on each MySQL-using customer Web site at some point during this period.
This upgrade is necessary for security reasons. We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
Update 10:48 PM Pacific time: The maintenance was completed as planned and all services are running normally.
