Hackers break into major U.S. email provider, wiping data

FEBRUARY 12, 2019 14:03

Updated: FEBRUARY 13, 2019 14:26

VFEmail's notice on its website about the hacking attack (photo credit: screenshot) — VFEmail's notice on its website about the hacking attack

(photo credit: screenshot)

Unidentified hackers broke into the servers of email provider VFEmail on Monday, destroying all of the data from its US servers, by reformatting them and wiping all of them clean.

The hacking was identified after the company's website and e-mail client went down without notice.

The company said it was working on recovering the user information, but all information had been deleted and the information was lost, the company wrote on Twitter.

"This is not looking good," the company initially wrote on its Twitter account. "All externally facing systems, of differing OS's and remote authentication, in multiple data centers, are down."

This is not looking good. All externally facing systems, of differing OS's and remote authentication, in multiple data centers are down.
— VFEmail.net (@VFEmail) February 11, 2019

In a series of tweets, VFEmail continued providing information on the magnitude of the incident, realizing that they would not be able to recover the information.

"At this time, the attacker has formatted all the disks on every server. Every VM is lost. Every file server is lost, every backup server is lost. NL was 100% hosted with a vastly smaller data set. NL backups by the provider were intact, and service should be up there."

At this time, the attacker has formatted all the disks on every server. Every VM is lost. Every file server is lost, every backup server is lost. NL was 100% hosted with a vastly smaller dataset. NL backups by the provider were intact, and service should be up there.
— VFEmail.net (@VFEmail) February 11, 2019