This year marks the 10th anniversary of the holiday which started in 2000, and I for one would like to petition for a more upbeat acronym, but hey you can’t win ‘em all.
Here at AUSWEB we’ll be celebrating by continuing business as usual, keeping your hosting services running nice & smoothly! Stopping only occasionally in order to calm our nerves with a soothing cigarette. Outside of course, not near your data!
LAS VEGAS. Earlier this year security researcher Moxie Marlinspike turned the world of SSL security on its head with a presentation at Black Hat DC. Here in Vegas, he’s expanding his tool SSLstip with a series of improvement that will make the tool even more powerful.
“On the web SSL is not usually encountered directly,” Marlinspike said. “It’s usually a redirect where someone types in bankofamerica.com (or any other site) and then they get forwarded to an SSL page.”
What the original SSLstip tool did was to take advantage of that fact to trick browser into thinking an HTTP connection was actually an SSL connection. Marlinspike noted that its an automated process to get a regular SSL certificate. The way the process works by first getting a whois lookup to admin contact.
“They only look for the root of the domain.the don’t give a shit about subdomains,” Marlinspike said.
As such a person could get a certificate for a null domain like *0\.attackersite.bankname.com that would validate. He commented that such a wildcard gives SSLstrip great power, providing what looks like a real certificate. To make matters worse he’s now also built in a technique to prevent the wildcard certificate from being revoked by the certificate authority as well.
“In short, we’ve got your passwords, your communications and control over the software that runs on your computer,” Marlinspike said.
There is however a solution. In response to a question from the audience Marlinspike noted that all the SSL vendors would have to do is validate the whole domain, not just the last bit of it.
Microsoft announced yesterday that their Bing search engine arm would partner with Yahoo! creating a joint strike force against the almighty Google in the online search and advertising arena. Combined they will total 30% of the search market, which is still less than half of Google’s market share, but when you can’t beat them alone – you might as well join together and pray..
Domain squatters have already beaten MS & Yahoo! to the punch for YaBing! and most variations, howeverTechflash.com outlines some further info on what the partnership actually entails. Including a lengthy 10 minute audio interview with MS CEO Steve Balmer and Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz.
Please find attached the new important Fantastico software security updates for your cPanel Hosting account
Joomla1.5: 1.5.12 -> 1.5.13
Open-Realty: 2.5.6 -> 2.5.7
SMF: 1.1.9 -> 1.1.10
TYPO3: 4.2.1 -> 4.2.8
WordPress: 2.8 -> 2.8.2
Coppermine Photo Gallery: 1.4.20 -> 1.4.25
Drupal: 6.10 -> 6.13
LimeSurvey: 1.82+ -> 1.85+
OpenX: 2.0.11-pr1 -> 2.8.1
osTicket: 1.3.1 -> 1.6 RC5
PHPlist: 2.10.9 -> 2.10.10
phpWCMS: 1.1-RC4 Rev. A -> 1.4.2 r327
TikiWiki: 3.0 -> 3.1
Zen Cart: 1.3.8a -> 1.3.8a [Patched]
Zikula: 0.764 -> 1.1.1
Please always keep your scripts save and secure and up-to-date to the newest version to prevent server and system compromise, which would not just affect you , but lots of other clients!
With this great little tool, now you can monitor your Linux based server easily on the go, right from your iPhone.
Bjango software’s iStat application provides a tool to monitor both your local iPhone performance stats, including the ability to free memory, as well as monitor your remote servers(Mac or Linux based) vital statistics. You can easily see memory usage, disk space, uptime & load averages and can also use the utility to ping servers and perform trace routes.
File Under “Faulty Plumbing”: For nearly three months, malware planted by hackers on servers operated by Network Solutions intercepted more than 573,000 credit and debt card numbers used to services rendered by the domain registration and hosting service provide.
A common question we receive from our customer’s is ‘How do I improve my Google search results?’. While there’s no easy answer, there are many opinions on SEO best practices. It’s easy to become lost in the various “do’s and don’ts”, and myths of Search Engine Optimisation practices (SEO), but as usual it’s best to head straight to the source for information and one of the most useful tools for managing your website(s) is provided by Google themselves, with their free “Webmaster Tools” suite.
All that’s needed is a Google account, and to add and verify all websites you own and wish to monitor. From fine-tuning your robots.txt file, used for managing how Google’s robots crawl your website, to analysing your search term keywords and managing your sitelinks – Webmaster Tools is a handy first port of call, especially before extending to other Google services such as Analytics, and Adsense.
Microsoft announced the final RTM signoff for Window’s 7 today. Meaning manufacturers can now start mass production in preparation for the official “General Availability” release date of October 22nd.
Over 10 million people chose to participate in Microsoft’s opt-in Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) providing feedback on Windows 7 beta’s, along with countless more non-participating beta users. The overall consensus with Windows 7 beta testers has been far more positive in comparison to Windows Vista, who’s mistakes Microsoft are keen to learn from.
You can bet Steve Balmer’s happy about how things are progressing and in honour of this milestone for the big M, here’s a lookback at one the Microsoft CEO’s finest moments.
Not the deep fried potato kind but the small silicon kind, responsible for powering most of our day to day lives, especially in the virtual realm of the internet. Intel has released a new press-kit detailing their chipmaking process, aptly titled “From Sand to Silicon”.
Pretty interesting to see how the process has evolved, and continues to evolve. Smaller and smaller! Have a look over at the intel site
We’ve been enjoying the 40th anniversary of the Apollo mission and the remastered Apollo Moonlanding tapes in the AUSWEB office today. Such are the joys of the Hi-Def revolution, however its quite astounding that one of the most important event’s in human history has only been documented in such mediocre quality for so long!
Even more astounding is the admission by NASA that the original high quality recording tapes are long lost (and they wonder why conspiracy theory crazies run wild), or possibly erased and recorded over during NASA’s budget slashing days. Either way, take it as an important lesson or reminder to backup your precious data because data loss can happen to the best of us -anywhere, anytime and to anything, even a landmark moment for mankind!
At long last, the last Friday in July or as it is less commonly known as – System Administrator Appreciation Day! Also referred to as Sysadmin Day, or SAAD!
LAS VEGAS. Earlier this year security researcher Moxie Marlinspike turned the world of SSL security on its head with a presentation at Black Hat DC. Here in Vegas, he’s expanding his tool SSLstip with a series of improvement that will make the tool even more powerful.
Microsoft announced
With this great little tool, now you can monitor your Linux based server easily on the go, right from your iPhone.
A common question we receive from our customer’s is ‘How do I improve my Google search results?’. While there’s no easy answer, there are many opinions on 
We’ve been enjoying the 40th anniversary of the Apollo mission and the remastered Apollo Moonlanding tapes in the AUSWEB office today. Such are the joys of the Hi-Def revolution, however its quite astounding that one of the most important event’s in human history has only been documented in such mediocre quality for so long!