Crypto Friendly Provider VFEmail Devastated By Hack

A security breach entailing "catastrophic destruction" has occurred at VFEmail, an email service provider based in the United States, according to a statement on the company's homepage. Of particular interest to Steemians―VFEmail is a provider that accepts cryptocurrency payments, notably Bitcoin.

_{Image by Taskin Ashiq | Unsplash}

A summary of the event and its unfolding aftermath has been published by investigative reporter Brian Krebs, well known for his focus on cybersecurity and computer crime. Throughout the attack and response the company tweeted candidly, remarking at one point "fear all US based data may be lost."

Later, an alert on the company's homepage read:

"We have suffered catastrophic destruction at the hands of a hacker [that] has destroyed all data in the US, both primary and backup systems. We are working to recover what data we can.

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_{Tweets from VFEmail, Feb 11th as the attack is underway}

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VFEmail has offered consumer and business email since 2001. This loss of data appears to encompass messages dating back the full 18 years. Remarkably ― given 18 years of data ― there weren't segregated archives of those emails.

This underscores the scope and unpredictability of risks that can arise in a networked world. There was no extortion attempt in connection with the attack. Other than a tenuous connection to an IP address, no perpetrator or motive has been identified.

However, the company had previously been targeted for denial of service and extortion, coming under attack more than once between 2015 and 2018. It is surprising that the company's disaster mitigation and recovery plan was not stronger in light of this recent risk history.

Offsite, network inaccesible backups on reliable long term storage media are one way to mitigate the damage done by such attacks.