Savannah W-ITS

How many times have you read or heard that the fix for a non-working program/web solution is to change the file permissions to 666 (allow user & group & others global read+write) or 777 (global read+write+execute)?
TOO MANY!
Sorry, had to shout a bit.  It is distressing to read such suggestions/fixes – worse, the readers of such [...]

ModSecurity is a web application firewall (WAF) for the Apache server.

I’m a big fan** of this Open Source solution – Once you install the module you can use it to:

• filter at the server level (directly in httpd.conf or as include files),
• filter at the directory/location/folder level (via .htaccess files),
• stop specific (i.e. known) attacks,
• stop generic attacks.

You can also use it to simply monitor your web traffic at a more detailed level.

Recent log

Web server security is something that we all want, but usually, we only want it when it is convenient. (This also applies to other parts of our lives when security is a factor.)

Convenience for us usually means:

• that there is a simple login process
• that server settings and pages are easy to change, maintain, and update.

Convenience for our site visitors usually means that a web visitor can easily access your web pages

Plugins are wonderful when they work!

Note – I discuss using a group permission setting in a separate post. I suggest using PHP ’safe_mode_gid’ for Wordpress (at this time); the same or similar settings may work for other applications but research is encouraged before making such decisions.

Plugins tested/used to date:

• all-in-one-seo – works well; easy to use; does what it says
• askapache-password-protect – this is a must-have to assist