The sites I host at Apollo Hosting are all small Dental websites , no scripts – just plain HTML. Not sites that I monitor every day. Quite by chance I checked one of the sites. The home page loaded, then disappeared. Strange. I tried it on another browser and this time I got a Google message warning me of malicious software that was blocked and an option to view a safe copy of some obscure .cn website.

I tried to FTP to the site and could not connect. Next I tried the Apollo Hosting Control Panel and after I was asked to change my password, managed to connect. I could now use Apollo Hosting’s File Manager to view my sites.

First thing I saw was that the .htaccess file has been tampered with. The file date was wrong. The content in the .htaccess was not mine. I replaced it with a clean copy but could still not load my sites. A closer look revealed a folder with files which were also not mine and I killed this too. Next I looked at the index.html file and found multiple lines of Java Script which triggered a redirect. After I cleaned this out things were back to normal.

OK – so how did my sites on Apollo Hosting get hacked? I am the only one with external access to my sites and I use secure passwords. I run no scripts on my sites. And this is the second time this has happened. I submitted a ticket to Apollo Hosting and got the standard reply – it’s not their problem, it’s mine. It’s my passwords and my sites that are to be blamed – not their hosting.

I did a quick search on Google and found several references to Apollo Hosting accounts being hacked. I mentioned this to them in my reply and requested assurance from Apollo Hosting that they will address their security problems. Same reply – they are right, their customers are wrong.

So the time has come to move away from Apollo Hosting. I have had zero security problems with any of my other hosting companies and I am sure I can easily find a replacement for Apollo Hosting.  Goodbye Apollo Hosting – I will be telling this story whenever I can.