Archive for Server Security

What is social engineering attacks?

Social engineering can be a malicious user pretending to be someone they’re not (for example, if they have gained unauthorised entry into someone’s social media account(s)) or if they’re contacting a service provider and pretending to be someone else in order to be able to, perhaps, gain unauthorised entry into some service, such as a web server or to extract information that would be useful to the malicious user.

There have been many instances of social engineering attacks. One of which involved a malicious user impersonating a lead developer of the popular billing software solution, WHMCS, which resulted in WHMCS’ server being compromised because the impersonator was able to answer all of the verification questions correctly. Social engineering is very effective and often results in favourable results for criminals.

How can I avoid social engineering attacks?
Social engineering attacks can generally occur anywhere – on social networking sites as well. The general advice would be to always remain vigilant and be wary about anything that looks suspicious. Even criminals sending e-mails through their compromised e-mail account is social engineering because some people may think it was sent from the actual person who owns the e-mail account.

Secure eUK Shared Web Hosting with Quality 24×7 Support

Shared Hosting UK

eUKhost is the UK’s premier shared web hosting provider, offering a number of low-cost web hosting plans that utilize both the Windows and Linux platforms so that there is a solution suitable for all users.

Our cPanel Linux shared hosting plans are amongst some of the best in the UK, pairing a high uptime guarantee with a wide array of features that guarantee value for money and will allow businesses to make the most of their web presence.

eUKhost’s Windows shared hosting plans feature the latest technologies including ASP.NET 4.0 and SQL Server 2008 so that Windows web developers have a reliable platform on which they can develop some of the most functional and user-friendly web applications. All of this comes at an affordable price, accompanied by our popular 24×7 support.

Shared Hosting vs. VPS Server

Selecting eUK Hosting for your web hosting requirements will open you to a range of web hosting plans that are designed to fit the needs of users of different requirements; for power users, the next option after a shared web hosting plan could potentially be a VPS server.

A VPS server is essentially a virtual server hosted in a shared environment, with VPS hosting nodes being shared by a number of users. The following comparisons can be drawn between shared web hosting and VPS servers:

  • A VPS server provides you with your own dedicated hosting environment, enabling you to install applications and services of your choice as SSH access will be provided to Linux VPS servers and Remote Desktop access for Windows VPS servers – although managing a dedicated hosting environment may appear to be a daunting task, support is available throughout the process so that assistance can provided where necessary
  • The core hosting environment of a VPS server is very similar to that of a shared web hosting plan as you are essentially sharing a core hosting node with other users, therefore meaning that the stability of a VPS server may not always be a massive improvement over a shared web hosting service, although with eUK’s support team constantly monitoring hosting node’s, the uptime guarantee of 99.9% should be met every month without issue
  • The price of a VPS server is designed to attract users of shared web hosting plans who are gradually running out of resources to run their website in a stable manner – as a website grows the constraints of shared web hosting will begin to show and because of this, a VPS server will be seen as the next naturally progression in the chain, therefore meaning that the low costs of VPS hosting are going to be attractive to users in this position.

Shared Hosting Security

eUK takes the security of our servers seriously and shared web hosting is no different with investment in new technology being made constantly so that we are able to provide our customers with a web hosting environment that  satisfies their needs and industry standards.

The security of a website is also a responsibility that should fall partially on the shoulders of the webmaster because even though eUKhost endeavours to provide a secure environment, if a website has been poorly developed is storing data in an insecure way then this could cause issues with security; as a web developer it is important for you to be aware of the most recent and secure coding techniques, whilst data should be encrypted when stored in a database.

We encourage the highest level of security possible for all of our customers, with SSL certificates being available for our Windows shared hosting and Linux shared hosting customers. Purchasing an SSL certificate will enable you to encrypt all data that is transferred between your website and your visitor’s computers, therefore keeping private communications secure and giving your visitors another reason to have confidence in your online presence.

Shared Hosting vs. Dedicated Server

eUKhost offers both managed shared hosting plans and managed dedicated servers that are all accompanied with quality 24×7 support, enabling you to call upon an experienced support team when you are facing issues with your web hosting service. The following are the core differences between eUK shared hosting and eUK dedicated server hosting:

  • A dedicated server provides you with a physical server that can be used with a number of different hardware configurations, enabling it to be used in a much wider number of applications than a shared web hosting plan – these different hardware configurations can be used to achieve different goals, for example RAID may be used to achieve greater data integrity in the event of a single hard drive failure or to even improve the read/write speeds of a server
  • A shared web hosting plan is hosted on a physical server with many other shared web hosting users meaning that stability of the hosting platform isn’t guaranteed, whereas with a dedicated server you will be provided with your own hosting server that no other users will have access to unless you explicitly wish to share your dedicated server with another business or user

The same level of support will be provided for managed shared hosting users and managed dedicated server customers, with eUK’s 24×7 support being one of the key reasons for many people choosing to use our web hosting services – eUKhost’s support team will have the knowledge to assist you with any issues that you could face on the Windows or Linux platform with the outlook of providing a solution as fast as possible so that the operation of your website or hosting service isn’t impeded to any extent.

Security questions when logging into cPanel or WHM – Extra security net

If you own a web server with cPanel and WHM, and you wish to further strengthen the security in order to mitigate unauthorised access to accounts (or, more importantly, the root account via WHM), you can add a safety net by enabling “Security Questions”. Simply log in to WHM, and search for “Security Questions” (or go to Security Center -> Security Questions where you are able to enable this security provision).

Bear in mind this will also affect every cPanel account on the server, so if you have any customers with a cPanel account, they will need to add security questions the next time they login to their cPanel account.

While there are even more stringent security provisions you can implement, for example by disallowing access to the SSH service or the MySQL service to anything other than verified IPs (via the Host Access Control section of WHM), this in itself is a good security implementation irregardless.

Multiple Ways to Enhance Linux Server Security

The article covers various methods of strengthening security of your Linux hosting servers. It’s a concise collated list with references to detailed articles sprinkled all across our websites.

This should prove helpful for beginners as well as experienced server administrators by referring to the different ways of hardening security for a Linux Server.

How to Install Firewall on the Linux Server ?

A Firewall plays a crucial role in securing a server. Nearly fifty percent of the total vulnerabilities can be avoided by simply installing either a CSF or APF firewall.

Please refer the following articles to learn the steps involved in installing CSF and APF Firewalls :

  1. How to Install CSF (ConfigServer Security & Firewall) ?

  2. How to install and configure APF firewall ?

How to Secure Server using SSH ?

Quite frequently we hear about news about increasing number of attacks on SSH. Its pretty ofter that we find people concerned about different bots trying to access a server via. port 22 with multiple login attempts to breach into the system. Inorder to avoid someone to get into your server, you can secure your server using SSH.

You can refer the procedure to Secure your server using SSH

How to Secure a Server by Disabling Telnet ?

An enabled Telnet may pose a major threat to the servers, disabling it can close the loop hole and protect the servers from any possible damage.

Please refer the following articles to learn the steps to Disable it on the server.

  1. How to Disable Telnet access on server

  2. Disable Telnet On a Server

How to Harden PHP for Security ?

One of the widely used scripting languages for apache and mysql is PHP. Being a known fact attracts lot of hackers and fraudsters with exploring and using the vulnerabilities. By disabling the system level functions in the php configuration files, users can protect their servers.

Learn more about PHP Security

How to Disable Open DNS Recursion (DNS Server) ?

This is one of the common areas that are often overlooked by inexperienced webmasters. Recursive DNS lookups can be performed if you are running bind. Disallowing it on your servers would not only keep it in the best health but also protect it from vulnerabilities.

  1. How to secure your DNS server

  2. Open DNS Error (DNS Recursion)

How to Install Mod_Security on a Linux Server ?

SQL injections and local file inclusion attacks are frequent these days, using ModSecurity an open source web application firewall can help you protect your server against these known security vulnerabilities. Refer the following list of articles to learn the method to install mod_security on your linux server.

  1. Installing Mod_Security on CentOS Server

  2. Installing ConfigServer ModSecurity Control (cmc) on Dedicated Server

  3. mod_security installation and configuration(Linux)

  4. How to install mod_security for Apache

How to Install Mod_Evasive ?

ModEvasive module for apache is one of the popular modules to help protect against DDOS (denial of service attacks).

  1. Avoid DoS Attacks using Mod_Evasive on Apache Web Server

How to Install RkHunter (Rootkit) ?

Rkhunter is a very useful tool that is used to check for trojans, rootkits, backdoors, and other security vulnerabilities. This is one of the proven methods to enhance server security.

Learn how to install RkHunter in the following articles

  1. Install and Configure Rootkit Hunter on Server

  2. How to install RkHunter on linux server

How to Install ClamAV on Linux Server ?

Clam AntiVirus or ClamAV is a free open source, cross-platform antivirus software tool-kit with the ability to scan various types of malicious software, including viruses.

Following article should help you learn the steps to install ClamAV on your server

  1. How to install clamavconnector on Linux Server ?

Cloud Servers

Installing ConfigServer ModSecurity Control (cmc) on Dedicated Server

Usually, some of the open source applications may not function properly as the mod security is enabled on the server. It can be enabled or disabled in both the ways either via .htaccess or from WHM control panel. However its necessary to have ConfigServer ModSecurity Control (cmc) Plugin already installed in your WHM on dedicated server.

In this tutorial we are going to show you Steps to Install ConfigServer ModSecurity Control (cmc) for your WHM:

Step 1: Log in to your dedicated server via SSH using root login.

Step 2: Make sure you download the latest version of ConfigServer ModSecurity Control (cmc) from the following source:

http://www.configserver.com/free/cmc.tgz

Step 3: Untar the GZip’ed Tar format file with the following command:

tar -xzf cmc.tgz

Step 4: Now, change the directory to the extracted folder:

cd cmc/

Setp 5: Simply execute the installer entering the following command:

sh install.sh

Step 6: Once it is installed, you can login to your WHM control panel and scroll to the bottom of the left hand menu and there you will find the “ConfigServer Mod Security”

How to Start, Stop and Restart Services on Linux Dedicated Server

Generally, in Linux dedicated servers, there are two different kind of programs running, one which needs user interaction and another which execute tasks without user involvement. The programs that execute tasks in the background are normally known as “services” and “daemons”.

Basically, there are many services required on servers to run the background such as DB Server, Firewall, Web Server, DNS System, Mail Server, etc… Due to these various services, it is very much essential to know the exact procedure of starting, stopping and restarting the services.

The procedure of start, stop and restart the services may change as per the linux distributions. Here in this article we are going to see how to start, stop and restart services in CentOS Dedicated Server.

There are two different methods through which you can start, stop and restart any desired service:

How to Start a Service?

First Method:
/etc/init.d/service-name start

Second Method:
service service-name start

How to Stop a service?

First Method:
/etc/init.d/service-name stop

Second Method:
service service-name stop

How to Check the Status of a Service: (whether it is running or not)

First Method:
/etc/init.d/service-name status

Second Method:
service service-name status

How to restart a service on dedicated server?

First Method:
/etc/init.d/service-name restart

Second Method:
service service-name restart

It might be possible that few services may have extra command settings. To find the available ones, enter:

First Method:
/etc/init.d/rsync [start, stop, reload, force-reload, restart, status]

Second Method:
service rsync

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How to install red5 on linux dedicated server

Steps to install the red5 on Dedicated hosting server.

root@server [] cd /etc/init.d/

root@server [] wget http://www.indianwebportal.com/downloads/red5
root@server [] chmod 755 red5

root@server [] yum -y install java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel

root@server [] cd /usr/src
root@server [] rm -rf apache-ant-1.8.0-bin.tar.gz apache-ant-1.8.0 red5-0.8.0.tar.gz

root@server [] wget http://pradeeps.in/apache-ant-1.8.0-bin.tar.gz

root@server [] tar -zxvf apache-ant-1.8.0-bin.tar.gz

root@server [] ls -d /usr/local/ant | mv apache-ant-1.8.0 /usr/local/ant

root@server [] export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant
root@server [] export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java
root@server [] export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/ant/bin
root@server [] export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:$JAVA_HOME/lib/classes.zip

root@server [] echo export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant >> /etc/bashrc
root@server [] echo export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java >> /etc/bashrc
root@server [] echo export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/ant/bin >> /etc/bashrc
root@server[]echo export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:$JAVA_HOME/lib/classes.zip >> /etc/bashrc

root@server []  cd /usr/local/src

root@server[]wget http://www.indianwebportal.com/downloads/perl-URI-1.35-3.noarch.rpm

root@server [] rpm -i perl-URI-1.35-3.noarch.rpm

root@server [] yum install subversion

root@server [] svn checkout http://red5.googlecode.com/svn/java/server/trunk/ red5
root@server [] mv red5 /usr/local/
root@server [] cd /usr/local/red5
root@server [] ant prepare
root@server [] ant dist
root@server [] cp -r dist/conf /usr/local/red5/
root@server [] ./red5.sh

root@server [] /etc/init.d/red5 start

You can access red5 by using the following url.

http://your.ip.address:5080

Restoring R1Soft CDP3 BackUp

How to Restore backups in R1Soft CDP 3  ?

Eukhost’s R1Soft Continuous Data Protection (CDP) 3 Backup system enables users with restoring  files and folders to your account at barely few clicks. The BackUp plans can be availed as an addon service by anyone.

The R1Soft console panel offered by us can help you restore files, folders or even the entire disk from the Disk Safe Panel. The below steps must be followed for restoring files onto your CDP account.

Step 1 – Use the URL provided by us to access the R1Soft CDP3 console. Use the username and password to login.

R1Soft_Login_Screen

Step 2 – You would be redirected to the Dashboard Area as shown below:

R1Soft_Dashboard_Area

Step 3 – Look for the option titled “Agents” at the bottom-left of the screen

R1Soft_Agents

Step 4 – Click the “Host Name/IP” link
Step 5 – You’d be presented with the Agent Details such as Name, Host Name/IP and Port Number

R1Soft_Agents_Host_Name

Step 6 – You must now look for the option titled “Disk Safes”. A list of all your Disk Safes would be displayed as shown in the following image.

R1Soft_Agents_Host_Name_Disk_Safe

Step 7 – Click the Magnifying Glass located at the extreme right to check various details about the Disk Safes

R1Soft_Agents_Host_Name_Disk_Safe_Details

Step 8 – Now inorder to start with the restore process you must look for the option titled “Recovery Points” listed on the left sidebar and click it.

Step 9 – Looking at the date of creation, you would notice two restore options ie. ‘Bare Metal Restore‘ and ‘Browse
Note : Bare Metal Restore would restore all the files onto your server, whereas if you intend to restore only few selected files and folders, you must click the Browse Button

R1Soft_Recovery_Points-Bare_Metal_Restore_Browse

Step 10 – Upon clicking the Browse option, you’d be presented with the files and folders their individuals details such as Name, Attributes, Size and the Modify Time as shown in the following image.

Step 11 – Now check the boxes against the files and folders that you intend to restore and hit the button “Restore Selected” located at the top of the same screen. Alternately, you may also download particular files and folders on your local machine in the same way except you’d need to hit the “Download Selected” button situated at the top of the screen.

R1Soft_Recovery_Points-Restore_Selection

Please visit the following link to check our R1Soft Backup Plans. Kindly contact our Sales Department to get a quote for custom requirements.

If you need any assistance with restoring backups, please contact our support department either via. 24×7 Live Chat or raise a ticket with the Help Desk.

Secure Shell(SSH) Commands for Linux administration.

A shell is nothing but a script which is written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system. It is also considered as a simple domain-specific programming language which  includes different typical operations performed by shell scripts which include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. In different terms shell is also named as a term for user interface, Operating systems and applications to provide an alternative shell interface to make interaction with the program easier. In simple terms if the application is usually command driven, the shell might be a menu-driven system that translates the user’s selections into the appropriate commands.

Lets see some basic Shell Commands for Linux administration

passwd : This command will make changes to your SSH account’s password, you just have to follow the options after typing change account password.
nano [option] [file]: This is a File editor, easy-to-use and very friendly.
nano –w /home/aquhome/public_html/index.php : your current editing

index.php with –w being non wrapping of long lines

mkdir [directory_name] : Used to create a directory with specific default permissions .

mkdir aquhome : Creates a directory aquhome in the current directory you are.

df : [attribute]

[b]df -h[b] : It is to show you the disk space available in human readable format (Mbit and Gbit)

cd : change directory
cd ~ : takes to your home directory
cd – : takes to the last directory you viewed
cd ../ : takes you one level up a directory
cd [directory path]
cd /home/aqhome/public_html

ls: This command lists files and directories in a directory.

ls –l : It will show all the files with detailed attributes.

vi : This commnad is used for advanced editor, having tons of features, but harder to use then nano

vi /home/aquhome/public_html/index.php : Editing that index.php file again

ln : Makes sys links between the files and directories

ln –s /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf /etc/httpd.conf : This command will allow you to edit the /etc/httpd.conf instead of the original, changes will apply to the original immediately. You can delete the link without deleting the original.

wall : broadcast message
wall [message]
wall so whens the server being restarted?
top : It will shows endlessly updating system processes in a table.
w : Displays  ip address of the person and who has logged in currently.
ps : Displays the processes that are running.
touch : creates an empty file.
touch [file]
touch index.html : creates an empty index.html
kill : terminates a particular system process
kill -9 [PID] : You can get a PID by using Top.
kill -9 100545
cp : Used to copy a file
cp yourfile yourfile.copy : It will copies yourfile data  to yourfile.copy
cp –a /home/aquhome/public_html/* /home/aquhome/public_ftp/ : It is used to copies all files in public_html to /public_ftp
du : displays disk usage
du –sh : displays a summary of total disk space in the current directory along with the subdirectories in human readable form
netstat : displays all current network connections
netstat -rn : displays routing tables for IP’s.
netstat -an : displays all connections to the server.
chown : command to change the owner of a file
chown [attribute] newowner.newowner filenames
chown -R aquhome.aquhome /home/aquhome/public_html/index.php
chmod : [-r] permissions filenames

Permissions :
u – A User who owns the file.
g – A Group that owns the file.
o – Other.
a – All.
r – Reads the file.
w – Writes or edit the file.
x – Executes or run the particular file as a program.

Numeric Permissions:
CHMOD can also be attributed by using Numeric Permissions:
400 read by owner
040 read by group
004 read by anybody (other)
200 write by owner
020 write by group
002 write by anybody
100 execute by owner
010 execute by group
001 execute by anybody
CHMOD 755 /home/aquhome/public_html/index.php
last : shows last logins to the system
rm : deletes a file
rm filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, will more than likely ask, if you really wish to delete it
rm -f filename.txt : deletes filename.txt, won’t ask for confirmation before deleting.
rm -rf tmp/ : recursively deletes the directory tmp, and all files in it. You need to be very carefull with this command.
grep : Search for patterns in files
grep root /etc/passwd : displays all matches of root in /etc/passwd
grep -v root /etc/passwd : displays all lines that don’t match root
wc : word count
wc -l filename.txt : shows how many lines are in filename.txt
mv : Moves a specific file.
mv -f /home/pen/ram.php /root/  moves  ram.php to the directory root

Basic Extracting Commands:
tar xvfz imagick-0.9.11.tgz : will extracts the .tgz file
bzip2 and bunzip: files with .bz2 extensions
bzip2 filename.txt : zips filename.txt to filename.txt.bz2
bunzip2 filename.txt.bz2 : unzips filename.txt.bz2 to filename.txt

Essential Service Commands:
service httpd restart : Restarts Apache
service mysql restart : Restarts MySQL
service exim restart : Restarts exim
service cpanel restart : Restarts Cpanel

The techsavvy technical team working at eUKhost deploys qulaity tech services with quick response to solve any problem. eUKhost also offers quality hardware and highly configurable Dedicated server UK with disaster recovery plans to host any small or large website with different technologies like VPS servers, Reseller hosting servers and UK Cloud hosting server to host your website with quick setup server guarantee and no downtime.

SSH Commands to manage a Dedicated server

Dedicated server are been choice of many online businesses because of the server configuration and features that are used to design a dedicated server may lead a webmaster towards his expected results. The central control every single aspect of hosting resources can make task easy for to manage a dedicated server and if you are not familiar with using shell (SSH) you will find the commands below a good start. They are amongst the most used ones by all the administrators worldwide.

top : This command display the information about the currently running processes on your server, uptime, cpu usage and memory usage and many more.

ls  : This command will display the content of a directory.

ps -auxf : This command will display the currently running processes on the server.

who : This command will display the users currently logged via SSH on your server.

Pwd : This command will display the directory you are currently in.

rm sample_file.txt : This command is used to delete the sample_file.txt file;

rm -rf sample_folder : This command will delete the sample_folder directory and all the content in it;

tail sample.file : This command will show you the last lines of a file. It is very useful when you read logs;

tail -n100 sample.file : This command will show the last 100 lines of the sample.file file;

mkdir test_dir : This command will create a new directory named test_dir

eUKhost offers quality hardware and highly configurable Dedicated server UK with quality support and up time with disaster recovery plans to host any small or large website. eUKhost also offers servers based on different technologies like VPS servers, Reseller hosting servers and UK Cloud hosting server to host your website with quick setup server guarantee and no downtime.

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