Verelox Incident 07/06/2017

This information was extracted from email exchanges by the former Verelox co-founder, Giovanni Mounir, in a hope to answer frequent questions and expose the practices followed by the current management.

1. What happened on 07/06/2017?

The current co-founder, Vishaal Soekhradj, took down all services on 07/06/2017 at 11:59 PM, which lead to a downtime that lasted more than 24 hours. The reason Mr. Soekhradj took down the network is to attempt to protect the website and control panel from deactivation, although deactivation was possible remotely whether a backup was available or not. Mr. Soekhradj booted the hypervisors that hosted the website and control panel into rescue mode and started downloading all disk images, including the disk images of the customers; the data to download was more than 3 TB, which explains why the downtime lasted long. (fully explained in What happened to the old website and control panel?)

2. Why did you leave Verelox?

I had to leave Verelox after figuring out that the current co-founder and also my previous partner, Vishaal Soekhradj, signed a contract that we agreed not to sign and tricked me into thinking that it was never signed as he admitted later.

3. What happened to the old website and control panel?

I have been working with Verelox since 2014, but I never took any income as we agreed to dedicate the income to building the company till the company generates profit. To generate profit, I suggested to lower costs by stopping using licensed solutions, such as WHMCS, and building our own technology/control panel. By the help of Twitter Bootstrap and iDea's HTML template, I built and designed the previous control panel and website (as of June 2, 2017) from scratch and the company started generating profit in late 2015, but I was still not offered any payment, although I could see that Mr. Soekhradj usually withdrew an amount to his bank account. Once I figured that Mr. Soekhradj breached our agreement and signed a contract we agreed not to sign by the first of June, (explained in Why did you leave Verelox?), I expressed my wish to leave the company and have a payment for the control panel and my previous years.

Unfortunately, Mr. Soekhradj refused to provide payment for my previous years and the control panel, after which Mr. Soekhradj attempted to lock me out of the control panel and access, although I wasn't paid yet. I informed Mr. Soekhradj that I will be deactivating the panel due to this behavior and decided to give him time till 07/06/2017 11:59 PM; Mr. Soekhradj had no access to the panel or website servers by that time. On 07/06/2017 11:59 PM, Mr. Soekhradj thought it would be better to shutdown the network in order to prevent the control panel from deactivation. The control panel server was wiped once the server came back online; the data stored was lost including the database and server files, but I had a backup by that point. Unfortunately, Mr. Soekhradj could not download the server disk image since it was not stored with other customer's disk images, and hence had no backup. I sent him a backup of the database afterwards so that he can get customers back online, although I was still unpaid by that point.

4. Did an ex-employee really wipe all the data?

A news header has been circulating on several blogs and tech-journals earlier stating that an "ex-employee wiped all Verelox servers." The truth is that no servers, except the control panel server, were wiped, which explains why no one reported missing data or servers, the unavailability of the previous control panel, and the Verelox website eventually stating that "we didn't lose any important data" after first stating that they tried their best to recover the data but that was not possible [https://web.archive.org/web/20170614141842/http://verelox.com/]. (explained in What happened to the old website and control panel?) The fact is that the downtime encountered on that day, contrary to what www.verelox.com claimed earlier, was due to Vishaal taking down the network (chat logs attached in Evidence).

We have been working hard to recover the data but this was not possible for all data that was lost.
After investigation it looks like we didn't lose any important data. — www.verelox.com

5. What would be the best thing for customers to do at this point?

Unfortunately, the new management is great at promising but not delivering. We can take as an example their recent claim that customers will be compensated due to the 07/06 downtime [https://web.archive.org/web/20170610000256/http://www.verelox.com/], although I saw servers getting immediately suspended due to the lack of credits once the new panel was online. My previous partner and current co-founder, who is also in charge of the current management, suggested using cracked versions of Microsoft Windows Server in late 2014 to generate profit, although this is illegal and violates Microsoft's terms of service. He was also the one who terminated free and sponsored services, because they are "free", once I expressed my wish to leave on June 02, 2017; this has done damage to a considerable amount of important projects and researches, including sf-se.net's 100K+ game accounts loss [Snapshot from Google Cache: https://giovannimounir.net/archive/10617/1.png]. I would advise current customers to migrate to a new host as soon as possible; if you are looking for a new host, I would recommend Vultr - I'm not affiliated with that host - based on personal experience since they have all of the features Verelox used to offer. If you would prefer to stay with Verelox, I would recommend to backup your servers regularly considering how buggy the new panel is and how things can easily go wrong with the new management due to the lack of required networking/tech knowledge; it is not hard to see from the above that the new management would care more about your money than providing a quality service.

A company that loses all of its data because it did not keep, at the very least, an offsite backup of its database speaks tons about its security. Fortunately, that was not the case, although we cannot thank the current management for that.

Evidence

CHAT LOGS - Facebook Messenger screenshots between Giovanni and Vishaal Soekhradj
1. [#1 What happened on 07/06/2017? and #4 Did an ex-employee really wipe all the data?]
2. [#2 Why did you leave Verelox?]
3. [#3 What happened to the old website and control panel?]
4. [#5 What would be the best thing for customers to do at this point?]
5. 2 - [#5 What would be the best thing for customers to do at this point?]
6. Vishaal suggests to close the company and Giovanni approves.

BONUS
1. [Vishaal complaining because he lost Facebook page privileges.] (Made him Admin later after I deactivated the panel so that he can keep customers updated.)
2. [False accusations and void legal threats by Vishaal Soekhradj through @Verelox on Twitter] [Screenshot] (in case it is removed later)


3. [Vishaal insluting Giovanni after the control panel was deactivated - see evidence #3]
4. [Vishaal crying for help after taking down the network]

Proof of Ownership
1. https://plus.google.com/+Verelox/posts/QUnv4Q6HPra: The +Verelox username provides proof that www.verelox.com was attached to Giovanni's account as he still controls the Google+ page.
2. Vishaal acknowledges that Giovanni owns the panel and that it cannot be used without Giovanni's permission.


TL;DR: My half-ownership of the company has been hijacked by the current co-founder, Vishaal Soekhradj - although I was the one who came up with the logo (the one on Twitter/G+) and name - and I was denied payment for my time. No ex-admin/employee deleted any files. The current staff has no networking knowledge and could easily put your information at stake. I would highly recommend migration to a different provider.