Net Shaker

Cybersalt's mission is to make the Internet a better place for you and for others.

The Net Shaker is a sprinkling of internet related news that we think our clients and visitors either need to know or will enjoy reading. It is also where the latest news about our company can be found.

The Brand-New Server That Couldn't Send Email

The short version: A client's brand-new server couldn't send a single email — because the IP address his hosting company assigned to it was already on a spam blacklist, burned by whoever had it before him. He inherited someone else's bad reputation on day one.

Barely Any Load, Yet Every Site Kept Timing Out

The short version: For most of one day this week, websites on two of our servers kept blinking offline for a minute or two at a time and then recovering on their own. It was not a hack and it was not an attack. A popular Joomla add-on shipped an important update that day, and a…

The Wall You Don't See

The short version: In a single week this month, the quiet protective layer around our shared hosting turned away roughly 600,000 hostile…

Why You're Getting Bounce Notices for Emails You Never Sent

The short version: If your inbox is suddenly full of bounce notices for emails you never sent, you almost certainly haven’t been hacked. A…

How a Chinese Webshell Survived 16 Months by Pretending to Be a Joomla Plugin

The short version: A backdoor disguised as a legitimate Joomla plugin called “MetaCache” lived on two websites for sixteen months without…

Cleaning Up a Joomla Hack Isn't Enough — What's Hiding in cPanel

The short version: When a Joomla site gets hacked through something like the recent JCE Editor vulnerability, most cleanups focus on the…