News

28 Oct 2016

IT guy goes mad, takes down global rental system

On the week starting 29th of August the Cloud servers for RentalPoint were taken offline due to a reported co-ordinated attack by Russian hackers. Rental firms across the world using the Australian based system could not log on.

“Over a period of days, our various Cloud servers in different countries were on and offline. Late one evening after a call to 911 (by our IT specialist), police attended our Canadian office and took our IT Specialist to the mental ward of the local hospital. Immediately after we commissioned an audit and had all servers swept for malware”, the company told clients.

“All our servers and systems were normal. The ‘crisis’ was in his mind, he was convinced his cell phones were also hacked, and that the Russians were listening in. All systems were immediately restored.”

“Many Cloud clients were offline, some for an extensive period of up to 2 days,  with disruptions continuing for some time.”

“Non cloud clients were not affected. As a result, we have strengthened our disaster recovery plan. RentalPoint started in 1986, and has never had a crisis anywhere bad as this one. ”

“We are mortified that this happened, and assure you that as a result, RentalPoint cloud systems are stronger and more resilient than ever before.   During the crisis our staff worked into the night as late at 5am to get systems restored. We have reached out to the family of our (former) IT Specialist, and they advise that he is under care.”

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