Archive for the ‘Web Hosting’ Category
by FireHost Evangelist on November 14th, 2009
Less than 20 days until CyberMonday. Your warehouse is full. Your shipper is standing by. But have you considered what will happen at your website after a flood of qualified buyers click on the irresistible and precisely worded ad for your product or service? Now (not then) is the time to find out if your website can take the heat that CyberMonday will dish out.
The Yahoo! Network Insights team reveals that eCommerce retailers see a 73% increase in online conversions on the Monday following Thanksgiving (compared to the average shopping day in November). This means when consumers open their wallet on 11/30, they will be ready to buy.
You’ve got one shot, one day to win their holiday business, and you need to be totally sure your customers’ data is completely secure, as hackers are just waiting to steal all of those juicy credit card numbers from the thousands of people coming to your site that day.
So how can you improve user experience and conversion for your eCommerce Web site on high traffic days like CyberMonday while ensuring their security? Creative elements aside, there a many technical intricacies that help make your Web site stand out online and stay secure.
Load times, load times, load times. When your Web server is underpowered, pages load slowly and can even fail making it appear that your Web site is down. If your Web site appears to be on the fritz, consumers a) won’t have the patience to wait on you to get it figured out or b) will lose faith in your ability to process orders successfully.
A Web site on the fritz raises questions in consumers minds and decreases the likelihood that they’ll hand over their hard earned money. Was my order received? Is this Web site capable of protecting my PII (personally identifiable information)? Could someone steal my credit card number? And you know what? These are totally legitimate fears. Hacker activity in the last year has increased drastically, and your buyers know it.
Nestling your precious eCommerce Web site in a reliable, High Availability hosting environment and deploying a content delivery network capable of quickly serving up all your high-quality product shots, video customer testimonials, and other heavy media files can help prevent the situation from ever becoming a concern.
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Tags: eCommerce Cybercrime Holiday 2009, Online Shopping Safety 2009, Secure Web Hosting
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by FireHost Evangelist on October 14th, 2009
Even if you’re not a football fan, you’ve probably seen news about Argentinean Coach Diego Maradona’s website being defaced by a Peruvian fan/hacker “Elite-Peruvian”.
The website’s intended facade was replaced with a tearful picture of Maradona under the caption “We made you cry” after the Argentine team defeated Peru 2 to 1 on Saturday.
Under Maradona’s image, the hacker included a Peruvian team photo proclaiming “For the biggest cry baby of all time. We didn’t win at the football, but we did on the web!” And as a final insult, Elite Peruvian threw in a soundtrack of Peruvian folk music playing in the background.
Details on how the hacker accessed Maradona’s website are forthcoming, but you can see images of the defacement on Graham Cluley’s blog. Referring back to Maradona’s 1986 FIFA World Cup quarter finals match, Mr. Cluley suggests Maradona seek a more concrete website security solution than the “Hand of God.”
We agree. For website security, FireHost may be the best option.
Tags: defaced, diego maradona, hacker, Website Security
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by FireHost Evangelist on September 11th, 2009
Windows 7 will be available to the public in October. It’s chocked full of new features and sports a modern look and feel, but beta tester Laurent Gaffie has identified a serious vulnerability lurking in the colorful background.
This particular vulnerability, SMB2.0 NEGOTIATE PROTOCOL REQUEST Remote B.S.O.D., is considered Medium to High severity. It’s triggered when “SRV2.SYS fails to handle malformed SMB headers for the functionality,” says Gaffie.
The flaw lies in a Server Message Block 2 (SMB2) driver and allows hackers to deploy a remote attack that could cause the infamous “blue screen of death” critical system error on both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 OS. Other comments on Gaffie’s blog indicate that the flaw puts your computer at risk of a Dos attack and could lead to remote code execution.
Gaffie contacted Microsoft; they are investigating the report, but have no ETA on a patch. In the meantime, users can switch off the Server Message Block (SMB) feature or block TCP ports 139 and 445 at the firewall for protection.
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by FireHost Evangelist on September 9th, 2009
We often hear Malware being referred to as a broad categorization for all bad things on the internet. In reality however, there are many different types of attacks that make up this threat category.
Data collected on the geographical distribution of malware “Phone Home” locations in the first half of 2009 shows that the USA hosts 35% of malware worldwide, followed by China (14%) and Brazil (8%). Additionally, cyber criminals use TCP port 80 most often for downloading and HTTP to transfer and send infections so they can avoid suspicion as these are both very common protocols.
Trojan malware rose the most in popularity in samples collected between January – June this year, and the penetration of viruses increased slightly. PUPs, Backdoors, and Worms declined just a little. Here’s how each category contributed to malware as a whole.
- Trojan – Trojans represent 55% of all Malware on the internet. Here’s how they work: Trojans perform a variety of malicious functions such as spying, stealing information, logging key strokes and downloading additional Malware.
- Backdoor (21%): Backdoors provide functionality for a remote attacker to log on and/or execute arbitrary commands on the affected system.
- Pup, a Potentially Unwanted Program (8%): PUPs are programs which the user may consent on being installed but may affect the security posture of the system or may be used for malicious purposes. Examples are Adware, Dialers and Hacktools/“hacker tools” (which includes sniffers, port scanners, malware constructor kits, etc.)
- Worm (6%): Worms self-propagate via e-mail, network shares, removable drives, file sharing or instant messaging applications.
- Virus (4%): Viruses propagate by infecting host files
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Tags: fraudtool, infostealers, malware, Secure Web Hosting, trojan
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by FireHost Evangelist on September 4th, 2009
Unsuspicious HTML email (without attachments) has been and continues to be the dominant format for outgoing malicious spam. In the second quarter of 2009 however, spammers changed their strategy and started sending more plain text and image-based email spam according to IBM’s X-Force Team in the 2009 Mid-Year Trend & Risk Report.
The resurgence of image-based spam is interesting because this style of hacking attempt boomed in 2006-2007, but practically disappeared in 2008. Now that it’s back, there are some distinct trends in the subject, format, and techniques that make blocking these attempts fairly easy for most anti-spam filters.
- Most of the emails advertise pharmaceutical products – drugs, pills, etc
- Only a few of the emails use random pixels, and many have identical binaries
- The messages contain random text below an embedded image
- Most of the spam does not contain links that recipients can click, but they invite the user to visit a .com website that must be manually typed into a browser
- WHOIS information shown on the images reflects domain registrars that are infamous for URL Spam
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by FireHost Evangelist on September 1st, 2009
Overall, phishing attempts are down in the first half of 2009 as reported by IBM’s X-Force Team in the 2009 Mid-Year Trend & Risk Report.
The decrease is fueled by a decline in the number of traditional banks. Researchers speculate that this trend could be fueled by the financial crisis, or perhaps improved security measures when users login to “real” banks online is playing a role. Make no mistake however, hackers aren’t slowing down. They seem instead to be targeting Online Payment institutions instead as reflected in the rise of attacks over the last 18 months.
To further reinforce the movement toward Online Payment institutions, PayPal is mentioned in two of the top five subject lines from this year. (PayPal is included four times if you extend the list to the top ten slots.)
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Tags: Hackers, Phishing, Secure Web Hosting
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by FireHost Evangelist on June 19th, 2009
Just three years ago, Drupal was a little-known, open source content management system (CMS) predominately used by nonprofits and small businesses who were enticed by the ability to create dynamic content for free using Drupal’s open source software platform. Since then, Drupal has become a staggering success with thousands of professional and casual users around the world.
Drupal’s Massive Appeal to Companies
The list of entities using Drupal includes large companies, like Sony and Warner Brothers. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the federal government’s Recovery.gov use Drupal too. The reasons for Drupal’s widespread appeal are many. Aside from being completely free to use, Drupal’s open source nature encourages active enhancement by thousands of developers around the world. The bottom line is simple, Drupal is constantly becoming better and better, without costing a dime.
The vibrant Drupal developer community includes dozens of “Drupal Camps” throughout the world, each with hundreds of attendees. Hosted by experienced Drupal users and developers who volunteer their time and knowledge, these camps are designed to foster innovation of the Drupal platform, educate new users, and spread the use of Drupal among web developers.
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Tags: CMS Web Hosting, Content Management Solution, Drupal Hosting, Secure Web Hosting
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by FireHost Evangelist on June 9th, 2009
In an unprecedented case, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in last Tuesday and shut down a web hosting provider in California.
Despite much positive press and a relatively long-standing history as a reputable web hosting services provider based in Oregon, Triple Fiber Network (DBA 3fn.net and Pricewert) was actually a cybercrime hub with principals and staff largely based in Russia.
FTC Chairman, Jonathan Leibowitz affirms, “Anything bad on the Internet, they were involved in it.” Other segments from the FTC’s reports indicated that 3fn.net hosted “vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.”
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Tags: Secure Web Hosting, web host shut down, web hosting industry
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by FireHost Evangelist on June 2nd, 2009
WordPress has quickly become the first name in blogging, transforming from an idea on a kitchen table to a blog platform with more than 12 million users worldwide in a few short years.
The astonishing success of WordPress rests on the shoulders of the open source principle, which provides free access to anyone and everyone with a desire to use the software. This delivers a no-cost environment for users, but also enables absolutely anyone to contribute to the development of the WordPress source code. This has led to a plethora of plug-ins and themes which can take a WordPress blog to amazing new heights, in both function and aesthetics.
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Tags: Secure Web Hosting, Website Vulnerabilities, Wordpress Hosting
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by FireHost Evangelist on May 26th, 2009
Soon after the Internet became a household word, so did “virus”. People learned that they had to protect their computers and email inbox or risk data loss, identity theft or malicious activity to their home machines. Over the last decade the internet has grown by leaps and bounds, and companies of every size now conduct business online.
While the software world has fought diligently to reduce the number of affective attack on the personal computer at home through anti-virus programs, hackers have turned their attentions to that which is most vital, but often not very well protected – the hosted website. A variety of tactics are being used by hackers against websites without regard to the size or industry of the business or organization. An American-based Internet security agency recently reported that Internet threats rose by two-thirds in April of 2009.
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Tags: DDoS Attacks, Denial of Service Attack, Distributed Denial of Service Attack, Phishing, Redundant Network Infrastructure, Secure Web Hosting
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