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How To Prevent Being Hacked Via Backups?

Posted by timothy on from the don't-make-backups- dept.

Popsikle writes "A few days ago one of the Web's largest hosting discussion forums was supposedly hacked via their backup servers. From the story: 'We've since learned that this very deliberate, sophisticated and calculated hack against Web Hosting Talk was carried out by gaining access to our offsite backup servers. From our backup servers, the hacker gained access to the WHT db server. The malicious attacker deleted all backups from the backup servers within the infrastructure before deleting tables from our db server. We were alerted of the db exploitation and quickly shut down the site to prevent further damage.' What sort of security do you put on your backup infrastructure? Looking at your backup solution could you be completely taken down by either someone obtaining a backup or accessing your backup servers? What sort of recommendations does everyone have for this not to happen?"

6 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Easy fix by bingbong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Offline and offsite storage (i.e. iron mountain) is a simple (though sometimes costly) way of doing things.

    it'll solve this problem quite easily.

    --
    "Omnis tuus capsa sunt inesse nos"
    1. Re:Easy fix by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

      HDs are NOT backup media.

      Please provide a citation that hard disks are noticeably worse than tape, which you appear to otherwise recommend.

    2. Re:Easy fix by QuantumRiff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, they are not, you are correct. In my post, I was assuming that this was a small website or business, not a mission critical company product. I didn't mention software, or tape libraries, or hot backups. I think sometimes its better to have some backups, then none at all. An external drive can be bought for next to nothing.. really, I can get a 500GB HD for about the cost of a couple of tapes, but then I have to buy 2 tape drives (in case one has hardware failure).

      Believe me, I could go on about backup windows, media, and techniques, but was hoping by keeping it simple, they would not be overwhelmed. By not being overwhelmed, they might start the process.

      Also, by not using a computer based backup, they would not have the same problem as the site mentioned in the linked article, where someone first cracked their backup servers, and deleted their only backups.

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
  2. Tachikoma by Anenome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Take a lesson from Ghost in the Shell, hire digital Tachikoma to protect you :) Problem solved!

    --
    "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
  3. Encrypt it by micksam7 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Encrypt your backups.

    Don't let your backup system have access to your main system.

    Allow your main system write-only access to your backup system, for the sole purpose of delivering new backups.

  4. Why were your backup servers by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

    accessible in the first place? Somebody in IT was not doing their job.