Security

Introduction to Tengine Web Server

Tengine seems to be a popular web server for Chinese websites. I’ve come upon it while browsing through Aliexpress and stumbling upon a 404 error: This error and more specifically its footer “Powered by Tengine” stirred up my interest and so I started looking for more information about this unknown to me web server. Here… read more »

How to Secure an Outdated Web Application in 5 Minutes

I’ve had the following challenge yesterday. A friend of mine had an old Joomla 2.5 with a bunch of customization – additional components installed, custom theme, etc. It was hosted somewhere and had to be transferred away for some reasons. But before being transferred to a hosting which I am responsible for, it had to… read more »

AppArmor Php-Fpm Configuration with ChangeHat

AppArmor is the default Mandatory Access Control module on Ubuntu, SuSE and other Linux distributions. Thanks to it, you can limit the filesystem access of a process. There are already some good howtos for getting a basic setup of Apparmor for Php-fpm. Though, in cases such as that of running multiple sites securely with Php-fpm, you… read more »

How to Run Sites Securely with Apache and Php-fpm on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

A great security feature of Php FastCGI Process Manager (Php-fpm) is its ability to run Php scripts with different users. This in addition to its other merits such as performance and many fine grained options for tuning makes it the best choice for running Php sites. Before anything else, I must admit that Nginx with… read more »

How to Install and Configure SuPHP

Notice: This article was written when  SuPHP was the most popular choice for running multiple PHP sites on the same Apache server. Now, php-fpm with different users is a better choice. But still, if you need this article, here it is… In short, SuPHP runs the PHP web scripts as a  predefined system user, respecting… read more »

How To Secure Your MongoDB Database Server on Ubuntu 14.04

The MongoDB database server is well-known for its unmatched capabilities for processing large NoSQL data. Its latest performance improvements are always under the spotlights and probably not a single MongoDB user has missed the recent news about the change of its default storage engine to the more powerful WiredTiger. At the same time, its security… read more »

Introduction to Anonymity, Data Protection and Privacy

Almost every piece of information contains sensitive and private data. Exposing publicly such data could lead to serious financial losses, legal issues and personal inconveniences. That’s why data protection and privacy are essential tasks in any data processing project. When data cannot (public records) or should not (useful information for scientific research) remain private, anonymity… read more »

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