RimuHosting Blog

Tag: Security

  • WordCamp 2011 – Wellington

    I (Liz) was lucky enough to go to Wellington on the weekend, and catch up with the great people running New Zealand Wordcamp. Since we have a lot of WordPress users and they are often requiring our help I like to keep up with who is doing what and how. I was originally going to…

  • WordPress mass update script 3.05

    From the guys at wordpress We’ve fixed a pretty critical vulnerability in WordPress’ core HTML sanitation library, and because this library is used lots of places it’s important that everyone update as soon as possible. I realize an update during the holidays is no fun, but this one is worth putting down the eggnog for.…

  • WordPress mass update script 3.04 – Urgent

    From the guys at wordpress We’ve fixed a pretty critical vulnerability in WordPress’ core HTML sanitation library, and because this library is used lots of places it’s important that everyone update as soon as possible. I realize an update during the holidays is no fun, but this one is worth putting down the eggnog for.…

  • Proftpd exploitable versions

    Due the severity of the proftp bug, and the mixed systems and versions in the VPSs, we many customers have switched to use vsftp, others just started using sftp, regardless that we have the following notes for customers willing to enable proftpd again: The bug affects versions >= 1.3.2rc3, for more information: http://bugs.proftpd.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3521 Here is…

  • WORDPRESS MASS UPGRADE SCRIPT 3.0.2

    Its that time again, yet another release of wordpress is out, and this one seems important due to a few exploits. Read up here more about it http://wordpress.org/news/2010/11/wordpress-3-0-2

  • Disabling exploitable proftpds

    A stack overflow bug has been identified in ProFTPd.  This bug allows users to gain remote access (usually root) to an attacker.  This bug requires immediate attention and potentially a restore to the last backup image of your server. Information on the bug can be found here: http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2010-4221 We have been handling the issue per…

  • Older versions of debian and updates

    We have come across several users who run older versions of debian. This is usually fine, sometimes for some reasons users are unable to update for some time but require a package to be installed. This is where the fun begins…

  • Security at home – encrypted home directories

    This isn’t directly server related at all, more for the home or office user who wants to make sure things are nice and secure. At the office we like to also make sure our desktops are fairly safe to connect from as well, mostly  in case the machines ever get stolen, we know our data…

  • Updating old installs – Plesk – and other nasty issues

    When choosing a VPS often people go with the distro that suits them best, usually one they find easy to manage. Whilst this is fine, you also need to remember that at some stage in the future you will need to reinstall or upgrade. Debian/Ubuntu based distros seem to scale and upgrade versions fine with…

  • Exploited VPS? phpmyadmin?

    Currently we are being inundated with scans and exploits looking for new machines to take over, most of these are using insecure phpmyadmin installs. If you are unsure if your box has been hacked then the things to look for are similar to this…