Feed aggregator

• New research reveals millions of host sites are without TLS encryption
• TLS encryption allows end-to-end encryption for safer communications and browsing
• ShadowServer has recommended these hosts be retired

New research from ShadowServer has revealed 3.3 million POP3 (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) mail servers are currently exposed to network sniffing attacks, due to being without TLS encryption.

TLS, or Transport Layer Security, is a security protocol which provides end-to-end security between applications over the Internet. It is used for secure web browsing, and encrypts communications through email, file transfer, and messaging.

ShadowServer scanned the internet for hosts running a POP3 service on port 110/TCP or 995/TCP without TLS support - finding 3.3 million hosts without the security layer.

Time to retire

Without TLS, passwords for mail access could be intercepted, and that exposed services could allow password guessing attacks on the server. Without the encryption, credentials and message content is sent in clear text, which exposes hosts to eavesdropping network sniffing attacks.

Almost 900,000 of these sites were in the US, with over 500,000 and 380,000 in Germany and Poland, but the researchers note, ‘regardless whether TLS is enabled or not service exposure may enable password guessing attacks against the server’.

“We have started notifying about hosts running POP3/IMAP services without TLS enabled, meaning usernames/passwords are not encrypted when transmitted,” the ShadowServer Foundation said in a tweet.

“We see around 3.3M such cases with POP3 & a similar amount with IMAP (most overlap). It's time to retire those!”

In August 2018, TLS 1.2 was updated with TLS 1.3 brought in, with 1.3 offering significant improvements in both performance and security. Whilst TLS is very common, ImmuniWeb reports that from Q1 2024 to date, there were 1,421,781 SSL/TLS events - so even with the encryption, there are dangers for users.

Via SecurityAffairs

You might also like

• Take a look at our pick of the around best secure email provider around
• Quantum computing can crack all our encryption, and that is everyone’s problem
• Check out our picks of the best malware removal

What's new in Fortnite?

(Image credit: Epic Games)

Fortnite Reload just launched a new map, along with a rank reset and changes to the loot pool. Slurp Rush is a brand new Reload map that centers around, you guessed it, slurp! There's a ton of the glowing, blue regenerative liquid to be found around the eight main POIs, making the need to carry shield potions much less crucial. New weapons include the Mammoth Pistol (a personal favorite), the Dragon's Breath Shotgun, and the Semi-Auto sniper Rifle.

Fortnite Chapter 6 is finally here, continuing with Fortnite: Lawless, which completely switches up the map once again. There's new weapons to try out, you can now fire off Sub-Zero ice abilities, and there's a whole new Battle Pass to work through.

We now know what's to follow in the next season of Fortnite, and Star Wars fans can rejoice as we'll all be jumping into Fortnite: Galactic Battle. For now however, there's still a whole new loot pool to try out, and a bunch of hip-hop skins to earn via the new Battle Pass. It's frequent updates like these that make Fortnite one of the best battle royale games around.

Here's everything you need to know about the process of Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 2 ending, when the next season starts, and what to expect from Fortnite in the future.

When does the current season of Fortnite end?

(Image credit: Epic Games)

Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 2 will end on May 2, 2025 at 2AM ET / 7AM GMT. This is according to the main Battle Pass screen in-game. In addition, Epic Games stated this end date and time in a recent blog post detailing the new season.

It's worth noting that some previous seasons's timings shifted by a couple of days just before the new one was supposed to arrive, so timings here are always subject to change regarding downtime periods. The best place to keep up on specific updates closer to the launch of the new season is the Fortnite Status Twitter account. We'll be sure to keep this page up to date as well.

✔️ Star Wars Themed Battle Pass ✔️ Weekly Gameplay Content ✔️ Culminating in a Live End of Season Narrative Event ➡️ Fortnite Galactic Battle arrives May 2, 2025 pic.twitter.com/JmRStRA2UmApril 20, 2025

When is the next season of Fortnite?

(Image credit: Epic Games)

The next season of Fortnite is a Star Wars-themed season called Fortnite: Galactic Battle, and it'll launch on May 2, 2025. This is when Chapter 6 Season 2 ends, and based on previous launches, we can expect downtime to end on the same day. If things change, and as we get closer to release day, we'll be sure to update this page.

What to expect from the next Fortnite season

Epic Games has revealed the next season of Fortnite as Fortnite: Galactic Battle. It's a Star Wars themed season with a new battle pass, map changes and even a live event that'll cap things off for the finale. So far, we've only really seen a teaser of what's to come, but it sure looks like a Star Wars fan's dream. Mandalorian, Chewbacca, and Darth Jar Jar skins are inbound, and by the looks of things there will be X-Wings and TIE Fighters to fly and battle in.

There will be "weekly gameplay content", and new points of interest based on Mos Eisley, and a food court built around the wreck of an AT-AT. Aside from that, we're still waiting on more details.

Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 3 map changes

(Image credit: Epic Games)

We've just received our first look at the new map that's set to arrive alongside Fortnite Galactic Battle (Chapter 6 Season 3). As you can see in the image above, there's new locations called Outpost Enclave, First Order Base, Resistance Base, and Vader's Samurai Solitude.

You Might Also Like...

• Best crossplay games
• Fortnite Chapter 4 review
• Here's when to expect the new season of Fortnite OG

If you’re looking for hosting solutions under $30 a month, Hostinger and HostGator are two of the best web hosting companies that you might be considering. Both hosting providers offer services that are suitable for first time website owners wanting to host their first site but there are differences between them.

Hostinger vs HostGator: main similarities & differences

Hostinger and HostGator both offer web hosting in the form of shared hosting, WordPress hosting, and VPS hosting. The packages are also very similar. Both offer a free domain for the first year, high bandwidth allowances, SSL certificates, money-back guarantees, and website builders.

Both provide a CDN and have uptime guarantees of higher than 99%. There is very little to separate these two hosts.

Where they do differ is in email and backups. With Hostinger backups and email are free for the entire life of the hosting plan. With HostGator they become paid-for add-ons after the first year.

(Image credit: HostGator) Price comparison

Hostinger’s most basic plan comes in at only $2.49/mo for the first four years and then renews at $7.99 per month for the next four years. Should you not want to renew for four years it's $11.99/mo. In comparison, HostGator's cheapest plan is $2.75 for the first year and then $10.99/mo after. This makes Hostinger considerably cheaper of the span of 8 years.

Hostinger’s basic plan lets you host 25 websites, offers 25GB of SSD storage, weekly backups, and email. HostGator on the other hand supports 10 websites, 10 GB storage, and unmetered bandwidth.

Ease of use

HostGator use cPanel for the hosting panel. It has been the industry standard for a long time but price increases have pushed many web hosting providers to create their own in-house panel. We find cPanel to be a bit out-of-date now but there is a familiarity to it that many will like. Plus, as it's been around a while and used by so many there are tutorials all over the web.

When it comes to building a website HostGator have a website builder that we used and found to be uncomplicated and intuitive to use.

Hostinger use their own hPanel to manage the server. From there you can click through to manage websites or stay in the panel to monitor the site health and manage domains and emails. Hostinger have two website builder options. One is an AI website builder and the other is a drag-and-drop option.

(Image credit: Future) Performance

Shared hosting could potentially lead to instability, if the server is not managed well by the host. This is because multiple accounts share the same server. Too many sites or a few sites that take up too many resources can cause an overall slowdown of the entire server. HostGator safeguards their hosted sites’ performance by limiting how many clients each server hosts. As a result, HostGator’s sites perform well beyond expectations.

Hostinger’s high-performance solid-state drives alone make data load faster, resulting in an uptime guarantee of up to 99.9% and a relatively higher site loading speed, due in part to their servers being located in three continents. 

When we stress tested Hostinger's shared server we encountered rate limiting quite quickly. We still got the fair amount of performance for our site and it showed that Hostinger are good at managing websites that start to take more than a reasonable share.

Dedicated, VPS, WordPress hosting comparison

HostGator has one dedicated hosting plan. It starts at $141.19 a month and renews at $188.79 a month. For this you get 8 CPU cores, 32 GB DDR5 RAM, 1000 GB NVMe storage, unmetered bandwidth, and one dedicated IP.

Hostinger don't offer dedicated hosting but it does have four VPS plans. You can choose the location from a datacenter in the US, Brazil, France, Germany, Lithuania, or Germany.

Hostinger's VPS plans seem to offer much better value but HostGator's VPS plans come with semi-management. This means that they'll monitor the server and provide premium support. With Hostinger's VPS servers, you're more on your own.

Hostinger's plans are also more weighted towards RAM which can be handy for web applications that make frequent queries to large databases.

Website builder comparison

Hostinger’s in-house and widely known website builder, lets you publish a website within minutes with an easy and beginner-friendly interface. With the tool, building a website takes only three steps: choose an SEO-optimized template, drag & drop to edit, and pick a plan to publish.

HostGator’s website builder also offers the “build a website within minutes” feature. Unlike Hostinger, their website builder will require five (easy) steps to launch, which includes answering some questions, inserting your logo, adding your images, editing, and then launching the site. This website builder also allows drag-and-drop and has a simple and beginner-friendly interface.

HostGator and Hostinger’s website builders both offer non-complex website building, but since Hostinger's website builder is extremely easy to use, Hostinger takes this round easy.

Security

Neither HostGator nor Hostinger takes security and protection lightly. That’s why you’ll get a free SSL, regular backups, DDoS protection and server monitoring included in your plan with both companies. These backups are automated and while Hostinger lets you download and keep your backup files, HostGator wipes them out weekly.

When it comes to advanced security options, however, HostGator has additional security measures from add-ons that you can find on the cPanel. These features cost a little extra, though. Hostinger has some of these advanced features available without extra charges. 

Hostinger’s security features are hands down more enticing, with the free advanced security features sealing the deal.

Customer support

As mentioned earlier in this article, both Hostinger and HostGator will have their support team ready to assist you anytime anything goes wrong to keep your website up and running. That means having their team on standby 24/7.

Hostinger only has live chat and email agents available, which means having a live agent is the fastest way you can have someone to the rescue if something isn’t working, which isn’t half as bad, except when you find out that Hostinger has phone agents ready to talk you through troubleshooting steps, on top of live chat support. 

That said, we’d have to give it to Hostinger’s customer support team. 

Verdict

The comparison we’ve just made has hopefully shown how close the competition is between these two popular hosting providers, which should help if you're stumped and cannot make a decision. 

There’s not a lot of difference between these two hosting providers as both give great performance and offer their quality services in reasonably-priced plans. 

However, when you take into consideration how much cheaper and more practical Hostinger’s plans are, not to mention a free trial to use their website builder and free advanced security features, Hostinger does get a huge advantage over its toughest competitor, HostGator.

• We've built a list of the best ecommerce hosting providers

Check out the latest Hostgator coupon codes to get discounts this month.