Category: Security

  • Old versions of PHPMyAdmin and Automated Scanning

    It has come to our attention that we have had a decent number of  alerts about machines scanning on our networks in the last day. All of them have been running hacks from /tmp named things like /tmp/dd_ssh etc. These files are owned and run by the apache user, and on further investigation all put…

  • WordPress Mass Upgrade Script 3.0.1

    This script will search /var/www (changeable in a variable) for any wordpress installs and make sure its upgraded to the latest version. It will run a backup to /root/wp_upgrade/ of all files and database before doing anything with the site in case of major catastrophe. It pays to check each site after the upgrade to…

  • WordPress & WordPress MU mass upgrade script 3.0

    Sorry for the slower than usual update this time. I was rather busy/sidetracked and left it for a day or two before doing it. Since it wasn’t a exploit fix release i figured it wasn’t a major. Anyway, here goes the new wordpress mass upgrade script. I no longer have a wordpress MU available to…

  • Easy Peasy Linux Firewalling – iptables

    A lot of our customers have asked for firewalls, and since this is a common theme, i decided that I would help them out. Of course it can be a mission to learn how to make your own and what to do or not do, and some of the pre-made ones can be confusing. So…

  • wordpress & wordpress MU mass upgrade script 2.9.2

    Okay, I have rolled the usual ‘upgrade all instances of wordpress’ script. In this version i finally got around to checking the permissions prior to updating and changing the ownership of them back to that owner afterwards. This was breaking things and could be rather annoying before if you had more than 5  sites to…

  • Whats using all my disk space up?

    Often we get asked by customers ‘What is using up all my disk space on my VPS?’. Usually we track it down to log files not being rotated or email etc. Here are a few of the commands we use to do that.

  • Keeping Tabs on Successful Logins

    There are a number of things that any sysadmin should be doing (or is already doing) to keep tabs on the systems they manage. One of the things that I do which is quite simple (read: quick and dirty) is having my server send me a message anytime a user logs into the server. I…

  • Quick and easy iptables blocking and firewalling basics

    A customer emailed in today had noticed somebody trying to hack or crash his VPS. He tracked it down to one particular IP address but didnt know how to block him. There are several things you can do to block him, the long term solution and better option is probably using a firewall like iptables.…

  • apache modules to help keep your system steady

    libapache2-mod-bw – bandwidth limiting module This module allows you to limit bandwidth usage on every virtual host or directory or to restrict the number of simultaneous connections. The bandwidth control, for example, can be configured according to the criteria: origin of the connection, file extension, file size or user agent of the client. Example: LoadModule…

  • WordPress Update Script – 2.8.6 and WordPress MU 2.8.5.2

    New WordPress came out last Friday,  Sorry about the delay updating the script. This script will update all instances of wordpress that are not the most current. Run it as root, it will make backups in /root/wp_upgrades of both databases and files in case things go wrong. It will determine if its a WordPress or…