OVHcloud
![]() | |
Company type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Hosting |
Founded | 1999 |
Headquarters | , |
Key people | fr (DG), Henryk Klaba (President) |
Products | Hosting, Web hosting, DSL |
Revenue | 897,299,000 Euro (2023) ![]() |
−40,320,000 Euro (2023) ![]() | |
Number of employees | 2,900 (2023) ![]() |
Website | www.ovh.com |
OVH is a worldwide, privately owned web hosting service company that provides dedicated servers, mutual hosting, domain names and VOIP telephony services. The company is a société par actions simplifiée under French law and its headquarters are in Roubaix in northern France.
The company has eight datacentres housing at least 145,000 machines.[1] The company offers localized services in France,[2] Germany,[3] Italy,[4] Poland,[5] Spain,[6] Ireland,[7] United Kingdom,[8] the Netherlands,[9] Lithuania,[10] and Finland.[11] It has also expanded its services to the United States of America and Canada.[12][13] The company has deployed IPv6 and DNSSEC.[14][15]
History
OVH was founded in 1999 by fr , at the time a third year student at fr (ICAM) in Lille. The name comes from the abbreviation of his nickname, Oles Van Herman. It also serves as a backronym for "On Vous Héberge", meaning "We Host You" in French.
In 2001, OVH rented 7 racks from Paris hosting provider Claranet. With its expansion, more room was needed and cooling became an issue, so OVH moved to an abandoned datacenter from Free, a French ISP. In 2002, another datacenter from Free was rented by OVH, who then bought its building for its first own datacenter in Paris.
In 2006, OVH opened its first European subsidiaries, beginning with Poland, Senegal and Spain.
Controversy
FDLR
OVH hosted a website of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel force, until September 2009 when a German reporter asked it why it was hosting the site.[16][17]
WikiLeaks
In December 2010 WikiLeaks installed itself on the servers of OVH in France.[18] France's Industry Minister Eric Besson said in a letter to the CGIET technology agency, that WikiLeaks "violates the secret of diplomatic relations and puts people protected by diplomatic secret in danger" and was therefore "not acceptable" that the site was hosted on servers based in France. The minister asked for measures to bar WikiLeaks from France.[19] In response, OVH referred the topic in emergency to a judge[20] in order to get a clear and definitive answer about whether hosting WikiLeaks is legal.
On December 6, 2010, the judge decided that there was no need for OVH to cease hosting Wikileaks.[21] The case was rejected on the grounds that such a case required an adversarial hearing.[22]
OVH managing director Octave Klaba commented that: "OVH is neither for nor against this site. We neither asked to host this site nor not to host it. Now it's with us, we will fulfill the contract."[23]
Bitcoin Provider Attacks
During the week of April 21, 2013, accounts on at least two separate Bitcoin providers websites hosted on OVH servers were compromised. The separate attacks occurred two days apart.
The account passwords were reset, and the servers were re-started into recovery mode, giving the attackers full access. The firms whose sites were hacked insist they never initiated a password reset (which requires an email confirmation). OVH confirmed that 3 customers were victim of a vulnerability in their password recovery unique URL system, as it was not generating as randomly as intended, meaning that an attacker could get the correct code via brute force.[24]
News attacks
In 2013, OVH receives a new attack of hackers ; all the database of European customers (name, phone, password...) is copied.[25]
Notable technical issue
In 2013 all the computing system of OVH was down for 4 hours.[26]. OVH then offered a week of hosting for the clients affected by the downtime.
References
- ^ "OVH backstage" (in Template:Fr icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hébergement Internet, Cloud, et Serveurs dédiés - OVH" (in Template:Fr icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hosting und Internetlösungen - OVH" (in Template:De icon). Ovh.de. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hosting e soluzioni Internet - OVH" (in Template:It icon). Ovh.it. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Kompletne Rozwiązania od Hostingu po Cloud Computing - OVH" (in Template:Pl icon). Ovh.pl. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hosting y Soluciones de Internet - OVH" (in Template:Es icon). Ovh.es. Retrieved 2013-10-14.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hosting and Internet Solutions - OVH" (in Template:En icon). Ovh.ie. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hosting and Internet Solutions" (in Template:En icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Hosting en weboplossingen" (in Template:Nl icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-14.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Serveriai, svetainių talpinimas ir Cloud sprendimai - OVH" (in Template:Lt icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-04.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Webhotelli- ja Internet-ratkaisut - OVH" (in Template:Fi icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Dedicated Infrastructure for your Business - OVH" (in Template:En icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "Dedicated Infrastructure for your Business - OVH Canada" (in Template:En icon). OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ^ "OVH : Ipv4Ipv6". Help.ovh.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
- ^ "Included Services - DNSSEC - Domain names - OVH". OVH. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
- ^ "Reporter succeeds where UN failed: Rwanda militia website closed". Christian Science Monitor. September 4, 2009.
- ^ Rwanda: German Firm Shuts Down FDLR Website, The New Times
- ^ "Expulsé d'Amazon, WikiLeaks trouve refuge en France - Le Point". Lepoint.fr. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
- ^ "WikiLeaks Flees to Switzerland as U.S., France Options Narrow". Bloomberg Businessweek. UK. 3 December 2010.
- ^ "OVH-WikiLeaks sets a reassuring precedent". 4 December 2010.
- ^ French web host need not shut down WikiLeaks site: judge (AFP)
- ^ "Following the wikileaks case". OVH. 6 December 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2013.
- ^ "BBC News". Bbc.co.uk. 2010-12-09. Retrieved 2013-10-15.
- ^ "OVH Forum: Our backoffice security".
- ^ "OVH : Un hacker s'empare de la base de données clients". Universfreebox.com. 2013-07-22. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
- ^ "OVH offre une semaine d'hébergement à ses clients suite à une panne - JDN Web & Tech" (in Template:Fr icon). Journaldunet.com. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
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: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)