How did this happen? My VPS provider ran some control panel management software of some sort called HyperVM developed by some company called LxLabs. Apparently this piece is software is a piece of shit and had numerous fatal security vulnerabilities. Someone found it incredibly amusing to exploit one of these holes and wipe hundreds and thousands of VEs resulting considerate downtime on quite a lot of websites having complete data loss, and even more being down for a long time. My stuff was mostly personal crap, but other people, fellow idiots, actually had important data and had customers’ data. All gone, forever and entirely irreversible. While following the situation I saw some people getting increasingly frustrated. Customers complaining, demanding refunds, etc. Customers calling to ask “where the fuck is my shit?” These are of course bigger idiots than I am. They lost important, “mission critical” crap, I lost private and largely unimportant crap.

It’s actually something I see a lot. Many people seem to put blind faith in the integrity of their data, even if it’s very important and valuable data. Of course their shit won’t get lost/burnt/broken/stolen/whatever — only the neighbor’s will. Sometimes it turns out to be different. I’ve seen people lose USB sticks with allegedly super important data. Some were fortunate enough to find it again, others weren’t.

I suppose the lesson is hope for the best, plan for the worst. Don’t be an idiot, backup your data!