/t208026-PIRT_649835_BOA_PayPal_on_sikou_olympe_network_com.html

Disappointed to see his phishing operations removed as a result of a PIRT report, a criminal decided to retaliate against the site. He attacked the French provider, Olympe-Network, and erased their 4 server machines, including all backups. A total of 12,500 customer web sites were destroyed as a result of his action.

Someone has an anger management issue.

A translation of the Olympe Network front page:

Hello and welcome to the Internet site of the Olympe Network.

The team at Olympe Network regrets to announce the temporary closing of the service of free web hosting without advertising.

Unfortunately, Olympe Network was the target of a large attack aimed at abusing our resources for criminal purposes. We consequently took the necessary measures and developed a series of programs to extract information about the intruders and thus to be able to provide it to the proper authorities (who threatened to suspend our domain name). Unfortunately the criminal, realizing that his action and anonymity were compromised, destroyed the entirety of the data present on the hard disks of our four servers, using a vulnerability recently discovered within an application installed on the machines. He thus proceeded, without any scruple, with the pure and simple destruction of 12,500 Internet sites, and as many email accounts and weekly data base backups, destroying the works of thousands of webmasters.

Our team immediately contacted the cybercriminal division of the national police. A complaint against X will be laid in the next days and our hard disks entrusted to the police specialists to restore the data concerning the identity of the attacker. We also called upon an expert in computer security who joined the Olympe Network team and will assist us in the development of a highly secured architecture. The servers thus will be reinstalled, reconfigured and personalized so that Olympe can reopen its doors under the best possible conditions, at the beginning of January 2008 if all goes well. We are now working on the development of the future Olympe Network, which will be more stable, more powerful, better protected, while remaining pleasant and easy to use.

Of course, such a loss of data is for us a significant disaster on the moral, financial and professional level. But it is more so for the users who thought themselves to be using a serious and qualified provider. Everyone is free to interpret these facts as they wish, however, our success in readily providing more than 12,000 Internet sites proves that Olympe, in spite of its problems and its current situation, know how to compete with other free providers through its simplicity, its attractiveness and its performance in the management of high traffic. Consequently, we invite those who understand that this closing is predominantly not our responsibility, to join us as of January 2008 for a new adventure which, we promise, will have nothing in common with its predecessor. We will take our time to offer a 100% stable and entirely protected service.

Please excuse the trouble caused, and thank you for your understanding.