In recent days Twitter with #smarterasp hashtags has had a lot of complaints from customers. SmarterASP.NET is one of the largest ASP.NET hosting companies, with more than 440,000 customers. Companies of this size were suddenly attacked by Ransomware.

What is ransomware? Ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts a victim’s files. The attacker then demands a ransom from the victim to restore access to the data upon payment.

Users are shown instructions for how to pay a fee to get the decryption key. The costs can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands, payable to cybercriminals in Bitcoin.

A ransomware attack has hit SmarterASP.NET, a popular web-hosting provider, forcing the websites of an unspecified number of customers offline.

“Your hosting account was under attack and hackers have encrypted all your data.  We are now working with security experts to try to decrypt your data and also to make sure this would never happen again.  Please stay tune for more info.  Please know that we are getting thousands of messages in our email and we don’t have enough staffs to reply them all.  So please don’t email us. We will continue to put out notices on our Facebook page. Please check back soon.”

What makes SmarterASP.NET an attractive target for ransomware attackers is that this company provides unlimited hosting every month for a fairly low price.

The ransomware attack itself is an undesirable annoyance for companies that market themselves to protect online sites, a huge loss for customers in their online business.

Throughout Monday, SmarterASP.NET posted an update to its Facebook page that said that the customer’s account that was locked by the ransomware was gradually decrypted and restored.

Some customers thank SmarterASP.NET for getting their website back online, while others complain their site is still offline. A user asks if hackers will be tried.

Phone calls to SmarterASP.NET to comment were unsuccessful due to the high volume of calls received by the company.

If you are a SmarterASP.NET customer who is looking for other hosting that is more reliable and secure, or you are looking for a secure hosting that is relatively inexpensive and has support that really cares about you, you can consider ASPHostPortal.