Macs aren’t the only computers that last forever
In the midst of Microsoft reminding everyone that Windows XP’s doomsday is less than a month away, Apple quietly announced that Mac OS 10.6’s doomsday was sometime last year, and no more security...
View ArticleCMD.EXE and its shellshock-like qualities
“So did you know there’s a Windows version of Shellshock?” a coworker asked the other day. “What, Cygwin’s bash?” I asked. “No, in CMD.EXE.” I thought for a second, back to some really nasty batch...
View ArticlePort 2381: What it is and how to manage it
I was doing some scanning with a new vulnerability scanner at work. It found something listening on a lot of servers, described only as Apache and OpenSSL listening on TCP port 2381. The versions...
View ArticleHow to use the lock in your web browser’s location bar
A commenter asked me last week if I really believe the lock in a web browser means something. I’ve configured and tested and reviewed hundreds of web servers over the years, so I certainly hope it...
View ArticleAll-in-One WP Security and Firewall plugin can be spectacular, but be careful
Over the weekend I installed the All-in-One WP Security and Firewall plugin to fix another issue–more on that tomorrow–and I ended up breaking my site. Hopefully I fixed it to a better state than it...
View ArticleI got hacked. I did it to teach you a lesson, and I’m sure you believe it.
The other day, this showed up in my e-mail: A file change was detected on your system for site URL http://dfarq.homeip.net. Scan was generated on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015 at 5:25 am A summary of the...
View ArticleWhat is vltov1?
On the afternoon of July 5, 2016, a mysterious directory called vltov1 appeared in the filesystem of my web server. A few files on my site changed, and soon my blog crashed, due to changes I’d made in...
View ArticleUsing the DD-WRT firewall
I get a lot of questions about the DD-WRT firewall. There’s a lot of talk out there that goes deep into theory and advanced firewall usage, but what if you just want to know how to set up your firewall...
View ArticleReliable power supply brands
If you’ve built a few PCs, or repaired a few PCs, you have some idea how important the power supply is. If you buy any old tin box that fits, you can probably expect to run into some problems. Here’s...
View ArticleFinding and blocking an abusive host from your Apache log
My web site slowed to a crawl last night, my CPU usage soared to 100%, and my built-in security measures weren’t helping. I ended up having to do some old-school Linux sysadmin work to stop them. I...
View Article
