
LxLabs boss found hanged after vuln wipes websites - pert
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/09/lxlabs_funder_death/
======
mahmud
_Ligesh was found hanged in his Bangalore house on Monday morning, after a
late night drinking session .. [He] was also still coming to terms with the
suicides by hanging of his sister and mother five years ago._

The man probably put all his focus into work to run away from that huge loss
of his loved ones, but when work failed, he was back at square one to face the
griefing he had ignored.

Rest in peace bhai gee.

------
pert
Related to:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=648788> (Hack wipes out data for 100,000
sites)

and

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=646451> (VAServ 'hacked' - all web sites
and hosted VMs down)

------
cperciva
When will people learn to make good backups? It seems almost every week
there's another story here about how people lost data because they didn't have
backups.

~~~
SwellJoe
We're in the same business as LXLabs, and believe me, backups are not as
common in the hosting industry as we'd all like or expect.

Even when it is made easy and automatic, we still get folks asking us for help
with recovering or repairing data that could easily be recovered from
backups...if they actually kept backups. And, of course, secure off-site
backups are almost unheard of (actually making backups secure from attackers
that have root access is a pretty hard problem; or, at least, one that
requires two machines).

Anyway, I've experienced it a few times in my career, and I can say with
confidence that there are very few worse feelings than knowing a mistake
you've made has caused someone major data loss.

~~~
e4m
Many of the lost accounts opted for the economy plan that did not include
backup... they got what they paid for. No backup unless they took it upon
themselves.

------
vimalg2
A man who lived extreme. I just found his blog <http://ligesh.com>

~~~
Jem
It screams "ego". I'm not surprised he had difficulty coming to terms with the
damage done because of his software.

I feel for the rest of the family. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels
like to lose three relatives to suicide in a such a short span of time.

~~~
SwellJoe
Agreed, though losing two would also be crushing. This article makes it sound
like the security exploit and data loss was closely related to his suicide,
but I suspect it really boils down to the loss of his mother and sister.
People who lose loved ones to suicide are many times more likely to commit
suicide themselves.

Reading a bit of his blog, it also seems apparent that his father is an
alcoholic and drug addict. His ego was almost certainly a defense mechanism,
and that kind of thing can be brittle.

I'm confident LXLabs was still doing fine...this wasn't going to ruin the
business. It's certainly not good for business to have a major security
exploit, but he had plenty of customers (according to the article, something
like an order of magnitude more than we currently have and we're supporting a
couple of salaries), and was the sole developer. Weathering the loss of a few
customers for a few months while the storm blows over wouldn't have been too
difficult. People forget about security problems eventually. Obviously,
security issues never made Bill Gates lose any sleep, or the man would simply
_never_ sleep.

~~~
Jem
Totally - I didn't mean to suggest his initial loss was in any way inferior or
anything like that. I hope that's not how it came across. :)

------
SwellJoe
Just saw this on Twitter: <http://paste2.org/p/253717>

According to this, it seems like HyperVM wasn't even the attack vector. It was
merely the enabler of damage in an already exploited data center. Exploits are
known to exist in HyperVM, but the case in question wasn't the result of it,
if this post is to be believed.

------
bdr
This list of vulnerabilities taught me a few things:
<http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/8880>

