The data also was being sent to an Internet server in Russia hosted by a Russian hosting company called FirstVDS, according to the investigation.

WSJ: Hackers New Target: Small Firms With Lax Security

Examining any PC or server hosted on the machine, it would appear that the machines were hosted normally by a hypervisor, but, she argues, it would be tough to detect another hidden hypervisor intercepting data or manipulating the virtualized computers.

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Today, virtualization allows servers to be converted to software "images" that can be consolidated and hosted on a single physical server, increasing a data center's efficiency by about 25%, Kerravala estimates.

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Six years ago, gap intelligence hosted its own email server that required expensive licenses to expand users, had to be maintained by an expensive tech support nerd, and was always at risk for a failed hard drive, motherboard, or California brown out.

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Type in "Paypal.com, " for instance, and the DNS server owned by your broadband provider converts that name into the Internet Protocol address where the site is hosted.

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