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Three websites on three different shared servers were compromised by a hacker through weak FTP passwords.  The hacker uploaded a trojan to these hosting packages and so these three servers were placed on anti-spam blacklists.

All three website owners have been contacted now and their FTP passwords reset.  The offending files have been removed and the servers should be fully out of the blacklists soon.  In the meantime for any users of the following servers they might be seeing some emails they send bouncing back to them undeliverable:

Galahad - 81.17.248.4
Gorlois - 81.17.252.85
Rivalin - 81.17.252.145

As a note to all users, please ensure all of your passwords are relatively secure.  Some secure password tips would be:

# Don't use a dictionary word
# Don't use part of the username
# Keep the password at least 7 characters long
# Have a combination of at least three of:
- lowecase characters (a, b, c)
- uppercase characters (A, B, C)
- numbers (1, 2, 3)
- non-alphanumeric characters (!, %, *, {, £, )


Update (12.00pm):  The three servers were removed from the blacklist about 90-120 minutes ago and most, if not all, mailservers around the world should have updated their blacklists to no longer include these three IP addresses.  The IP addresses are fully removed from the blacklist itself.

Currently there is a slight backlog of email on our Premium Spam Filter cluster.  This is causing a delay in some emails for customers of our Premium Spam Filter service.

One of the servers in the cluster is currently experiencing some issues with an unknown RBL (an IP Blacklist), our engineering team are working on this but it's causing delays of between 5 and 20 minutes to emails going through the filter.


UPDATE (14.30):
The mail queue has been significantly reduced now and is staying at a reasonably low figure.  Our engineers are still monitoring the issue however to ensure it does not increase again and cause longer mail delays.

The shared hosting server Morgana is currently not responding. It is being rebooted, and we waiting for it to come back up.

This post will be updated when we find out what caused the issue.

Update: The server is back up and we are now investigating to see what caused the issue.

We have been contacted by several clients who are having issues sending and receiving emails to various ISPs and companies.

We at Blacknight ARE NOT using ORDB as it is defunct, however it is obvious that quite a few people still are. We cannot assist you, as the mail servers affected are not under our control.

If you have issues sending mails please check the error message. If there is a reference to ORDB you will need to contact the person / company you are sending the mail to.