[noduerme]

Still, the amount stolen in Bitcoins here is probably small potatoes next to the value of all the credit cards and personal details stored in other Linode instances. If someone can hack their admin panel and get root access to 8 accounts, they can get access to all the accounts. This time it happened to be done by someone who was going after the Bitcoins. But how can they claim anything in the way of security?

People who host on a VPS typically do so because they want to run complex applications that scale up, and do so without the cost or headaches of adding more physical hardware. Most people who use Linode probably do not do so to host static webpages, which can be done just fine on a shared server for a quarter the price. While Linode might be cheap, they do claim to be secure, and if they didn't it's doubtful people would host their apps there. And most apps do take some personal information; and a large number of them take financial details.

No one would use Linode to host their apps if they thought all accounts were rootable from a master login panel. And no one would use them to host static pages. So who would their customers be if people didn't expect their instances to be secure?