Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 83 posts

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#61

Post by Ded7xSEoPKYNsDd »

tdicola wrote: post #48

Anyone have tips on how to secure their Linux VPS? I just set one up and disabled SSH password login, locked down all the ports with iptables (using ufw), and enabled fail2ban. Anything else I should install or configure to make myself a little more secure? Was considering tripwire but I dunno how much a headache it would be with false positives as I change things on the server.

On my personal machines, I also setup a cronjob to automatically install updates. There's a small risk of breakage (I had one in 5 years), but I prefer that over a bill like op's.

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#62

Post by xrjn »

lucb1e wrote: post #55
waxjar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that rent a $15/year VPS use it to run an IRC bouncer or a small web log, something you don't need to know a whole lot of sysadmin stuff for. They just need a machine that's always on. It's hardly worth hiring a sysadmin for (I find that suggestion laughable, to be frank). Managed hosting doesn't allow you to do much else besides hosting a website in PHP, which is not enough for plenty of use-cases, including…

> $15/year VPS Do tell, where do I get one of those? Cheapest I know of is $60 ($5 a month).

http://serverbear.com/compare/vps is a great place to find these VPSs, they list some of the smaller services.

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#63

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

pmalynin wrote: post #54
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS also has billing alarms. If you're running an account which should cost $15/month then for the love of god set an alarms at e.g. $20/month. I had a reserved instance for 12 months, forgot to renew it, and on the 13th month (when it was on-demand) the usage creeped over my cap and I started getting alarms allowing me to kill the instance, renew my reserved, and restart it. Saved me at least $10. On a related topic…

You can prepay on Digital Ocean.

That isn't what their FAQ claims:

> Can I pay in advance?

> We do not currently accept pre-payment, but you can add additional credit to your account at anytime by sending in a PayPal payment.

https://www.digitalocean.com/help/pricing-and-billing/

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#64

Post by ben0x539 »

monstermonster wrote: post #33
ben0x539 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. There's some semantic information associated with the choice of that misspelling, though.

I assume that was a pr0n whinger? I used that intentionally to prevent the association of HN with the other form of the word. It is polite IMHO.

With showdead on, the post reads:

> Am I right in assuming that "pr0n" is some kind of 1337, 80s hackerish misspelling of "..."

... with the ellipsis substituted to accomodate your preference. ;-)

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#65

Post by vacri »

lucb1e wrote: post #55
waxjar wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that rent a $15/year VPS use it to run an IRC bouncer or a small web log, something you don't need to know a whole lot of sysadmin stuff for. They just need a machine that's always on. It's hardly worth hiring a sysadmin for (I find that suggestion laughable, to be frank). Managed hosting doesn't allow you to do much else besides hosting a website in PHP, which is not enough for plenty of use-cases, including…

> $15/year VPS Do tell, where do I get one of those? Cheapest I know of is $60 ($5 a month).

cloudatcost has $1/mo small servers, or you can buy one 'permanently' for $35.

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#67

Post by vacri »

Nyr wrote: post #58
JosephRedfern wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6577465

Any sane provider with no DDoS protection will nullroute you on incoming DDoS, that's not Hetzner specific. If you expect to get DDoSed, buy protection or go with OVH.

The problem wasn't the nullrouting, it was 'contact support to re-enable... and support isn't open until Monday'.

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#68

Post by matthewarkin »

I had the same thing happen to me. I wrote about it on my blog http://mattarkin.com/protect-your-azure-linux-vm-aka-how-to-.... Basically I complained to Microsoft, they said they'd waive the charge but since it was for a linux vm they said they couldn't cover it. Then I complained to American Express claiming it was an unauthorized and fraudulent charge. Amex sent the dispute to Microsoft and they never responded so I wont the chargeback.

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#69

Post by onestone »

njsubedi wrote: post #38
onestone wrote: post #30

Stop using providers which charge a ridiculous price for bandwidth (like AWS). There are many excellent alternatives where a TB costs only a few dollars/euros.

like?

Linode, DigitalOcean, OVH, Hetzner, and so on...

Re: Ask HN: My VPS got hacked and now I'm facing a massive bill. What can I do?

#70

Post by jacquesm »

njsubedi wrote: post #38
onestone wrote: post #30

Stop using providers which charge a ridiculous price for bandwidth (like AWS). There are many excellent alternatives where a TB costs only a few dollars/euros.

like?

1and1 leaseweb ovh
Post reply on HN