A former employee of web hosting provider HostGator has been arrested and charged with installing a backdoor giving him control to more than 2,700 servers, according to a report Friday by Ars Technica. Eric Gunnar Gisse, 29, of San Antonio, Texas, worked as a medium-level administrator from September 2011 until he was terminated on February 15, 2012, according to the report. A day after his dismissal, HostGator noticed a backdoor application that allowed Gisse to log in to servers from remote locations. Gisse obtained a HostGator digital SSH key and transferred it to computers under his control, and tried to disguise his malware as a widely used Unix administration tool to prevent his boss from discovering the backdoor process. HostGator COO Patrick Pelanne tells Ars that there is no evidence he used the private customer data he was able to see through the root access because HostGator “caught it well before he any chance to do any of that.â€While Gisse is scheduled to be arraigned in May, and is innocent until proven guilty, it does show that even mid-level employees can pose a threat to sensitive information, particularly when it comes to web hosting. Having access to 2,700 servers could mean Gisse had access to potentially thousands of customers’ information. He is being held at the Harris County Jail on $20,000 bond. Two years ago, also in San Antonio, a former Rackspace employee was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud, admitting that he submitted fake service orders with the intent of earning higher commissions.* In 2011, Go Daddy was hit by a lawsuit from a customer that accused the web host of being negligent when it handed over domains belonging to his business to a former business partner, locking him out of his account. [URL="http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/ex-hostgator-employee-charged-with-installing-backdoor-on-2700-servers]The Web Host Industry Review [/URL]
