Daniels Hosting, one of the largest Dark Web hosting providers, was breached by hackers this week.
The hack took place on Thursday, November 15, according to Daniel Winzen, the hosting service's developer.
“According to my analysis, it appears that someone has managed to access the database and deleted all the accounts,” he tells DH portal.
Winzen also reports that the server’s root account has been deleted, along with 6,500+ Dark Web services hosted on the platform.
“Unfortunately, all data was lost and by design, there are no backups,” Winzen said. “I will revert back to hosting once the vulnerability is identified and fixed.”
I will do a full analysis of the logs, but based on my findings so far I believe the hacker was able to gain admin privileges to the databases. There is no indication that he had full access to the system and some accounts and files that were not part of the hosting were left intact.
I could re-enable the service once the vulnerability is found, but first I would have to find it.
So for the last two days, Winzen has been examining possible vulnerabilities that the hacker used to gain access to Daniels Hosting's hosting server.
So far, he has identified one flaw, a PHP 0Day. Details of this vulnerability have been known for about a month only within PHP development circles, and it appears to have been released publicly on November 14, the day before the hack.
But Winzen doesn't believe it's the hacker's actual entry point:
It is a vulnerability that was reported as a possible entry point by a user. However, I would consider it unlikely that it was the actual entry point, as the configuration files containing database access details were read-only for the appropriate users. This vulnerability did not grant the necessary permissions.
The German developer said the hack could be “an opportunity to improve on some bad design choices from the past and start with a new, improved service, which I will probably release in December.”.
It should be noted that after the hack of Freedom Hosting II, a popular Dark Web hosting provider, in February 2017, Daniels Hosting became the largest hosting provider on the Dark Web.
The hack may have been facilitated by the fact that Daniels Hosting's source code was always open on GitHub and could therefore be read and investigated by anyone.
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