Cheap Nigerian web hosts –– oh the troubles they have caused.
Recently, we at CreativityKills decided to stay off making critical decisions for our clients regarding their choice of hosting, mainly because we did not own the infrastructure and we didn’t think vouching for any company was worth it. When something goes down (and it sometimes does with servers) we would be the one taking heat for something we have no control over. That wasn’t cool.
Cheap Nigerian web hosts – The perils
We had previously talked about how to be wary when picking the right web hosting company for your business. However, most businesses are usually always on a budget and are always looking to “cut costs” at all costs, pun intended.
The problem with using the pricing as a judge of whether to use a web hosting service or not is simple, and no serious business owner needs a soothsayer to know that. However, I, personally, didn’t think much of it until today when a clients server was compromised.
A shell script was uploaded to the server which was barely up to 3 days old, and still had a fresh WordPress installation. So how could this have happened? Simple, the cheap Nigerian web hosts server itself was compromised.
The hacker had managed to somehow infect the server and had access to over 1000+ domains on the network including that of my client. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have known the server was compromised if the hacker hadn’t gotten (very) sloppy and deleted the WordPress admin account of my client.
This action alone prompted me to investigate the access logs, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before I found a trail leading to the hacker’s shell script. I wasn’t still satisfied because the shell script should have had to have gotten there somehow, so after even more digging around i found that it was uploaded from a remotely infected website.
Now, I am not saying that this is bound to happen to all cheap servers, but the truth is they are usually cheap for a reason.
Related: Things to consider when choosing a web host
We have however been forced to, once again, review our decision to not be involved in the server selection process for our clients. In the least, we would warn them of the dangers of them choosing to fly with cheaper hosting programs, and urge them to up their budgets for something more stable.
As for the current client, we have stopped working on the site and we are urging the client to up the budget to have the site moved to a more suitable hosting company.
We personally have been using MediaTemple web hosting for years now without any hiccup so far. You can however, search and look for one that suits you more based on reviews of course. We, have been encouraging our clients to invest more in web hosting and not just the design and development of the website.
Cheap Nigerian Web Hosts Victims – Conclusion
Cheap Nigerian web hosts should be avoided especially if they have proved to be lax in small things like customer service. I’m not saying they are bad (some are) but if you really want to invest in a business, then you should stop cutting too many corners. If you however want a basic personal site you don’t really care about then i guess its okay to use cheap Nigerian web hosts.
I have not mentioned the name of the compromised web hosting company for the reason of safety. The compromised website owners however need to know that their sites aren’t safe anymore and need to be backed up and moved. As for the affected web hosting company, an email will be sent to them regarding my findings and hopefully they step up their game and invest in proper infrastructures.
If you are bothered about the identity you can contact us directly and we will clarify this for you.
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