"They kicked me off," Mitnick says, noting he doesn't begrudge Hostedhere.net, which he used for five years. But after a number of break-ins that targeted the former hacker, "they decided it wasn't cost-effective to keep me around," Mitnick says, adding, "I'm a target," mostly for those who want to play "king of the hill" by hacking someone once known as a .

during last week's Black Hat conference that Mitnick and other security experts had their Web sites hacked.

But Mitnick hasn't been left Webless. FireHost has stepped in to offer Mitnick a refuge for the basic advertising he does online for his consultancy, . 

FireHost provides hosting that uses what CEO Chris Drake claims are better defense measures -- provided to all its customers -- han might be found at the typical Web-hosting firm.

FireHost makes use of the Imperva application firewall to defend against SQL injection, cross-site scripting and other . The firm also makes use of home-grown Snort-based tools and Top Layer's security device to mitigate against denial-of-service attacks, intrusion-prevention and to scan for possible infected Web pages.