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Accused of misusing resources: how can I defend myself?
One day I found my VPS not running, and VPS-hosting (I do not name it now, but might do it later!) informed me my VPS was shut down because I was misusing hw-resources and generating too much load on their hw-infrastructure.
This really surprised me, as my VPS was basically sitting idle, with just secondary-dns running, and single static web-page of "under construction" type. I checked graphs on VPS-hosting statistics webpage: until my VPS was shut down, it was using ~10% of hard-drive space, no more than 20% memory, and virtually no network-traffic. I restarted my VPS, checked logs, found nothing. System was fully auto-updated, no security breach detected.
I opened support-ticket and requested some kind of explanation, but got basically the same sh*t without any proof. I also got very clear warning they might cancel my VPS altogether if this happens again. I suppose they want to get rid of me because I have one of those cheap VPS for promo-price and decided to use this tactics: accuse me of some wrongdoing (without any proof), claim I have done it repeatedly, and cancel my VPS.
My question is: how can I defend myself? Do I really have no chance against this mean behavior?
Comments
This isn't Virmach by any chance?
https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/149459/cpu-abuse-notices-from-virmach#latest
I would suggest if you feel this way about the host you use you should stop expending any energy on them and just move on.
From a hosts perspective though, we don't hate money so there is no reason to kick people out randomly, if I had $1 for every time I have heard "but it was idle" I would be much better off.
99 times out of 100 the cause is badly configured ntp/bind/something else that is being used as part of an amplification attack or the end user has signed up with 'password1' or 'changeme' and the server has been added to some botnet or they are running KVM on an IDE driver, and many other things.
It happens, please consider the possibility that your VPS may actually have been causing issues.
I was warned twice for bandwidth overage after a few days joining oneasiahost.com at first I thought it was a glitch, I cancelled the service. a few months later I rejoin again and got the second warning again for bandwidth overage. They did not care about my argument. I guess I had to move on and ditched the provider.
Your option to defend yourself is to explain the provider what you are running. It may be human error or automation system error. Sometimes stuff like that happens. Your VPS may also have had the secondary-dns probably doing recursion and participating in an amplification attack.
What the customer thinks they are doing is not always the same as what they server is actually doing.
It is more common than we would like that some of our clients do not take sufficient security measures to prevent their servers being used and abused by unscrupulous 3rd parties.
If there is a serious abuse, our first reaction is to suspend. The reason I think is obvious. In cases of SPAM, it can affect our other users from actually being able to send out legitimate E-Mail. In case of an amplification attack, it consumes large amounts of bandwidth, which affects perfromance. In cases of mining, it takes up too much CPU time, which again affects performance.
I think it is reasonable to act immediatly in order to protect the rest of the network.
Unfortunatly some users don't see it this way. They feel that they are victims of hackers (and they are technically) and bare no responsibility for the offences committed. So if the bandwidth allowance is all used up, they feel it is unfair that they had to pay for it when some hacker used it all up. But of course they never see it from the provider's perspective, which is if they don't pay for it, we do. But more important than that, it is ultimately the end user's responsibility to keep the server secure and prevent abuse. A free pass ends up pushing the cost onto the provider and does nothing to persuade the end user to improve anything.
Depends what's going on.
This is the question you need to ask. From a provider perspective, and idling client is an ideal client (usually). Idling servers use very little resources, and so they don't normally cause problems. And unless you're paying unsustainable scam rates (like $50 for lifetime VPS), there is really no reason for a provider to kick you out. We don't hate money
I asked what particular resource I misused (cpu-time, disk i/o, network?) and did not receive clear answer. So I have no idea what should I look for...
If it were cpu or network, it should be definitely visible in cpanel-statistics. But it shows nothing. Very small network-traffic, basically just syncing software-repository and unattended upgrades. I'm running "bind" as dn-server, but not as recursive-resolver, and I'm using rate-limiting (configuration from page 32 of this docu). I doubt "bind" could generate some excessive traffic (which is even not visible on traffic-graph)...