3 Basic Tips to Prevent A DDoS Attack

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are always in top headlines worldwide, as they are plaguing websites in banks, and virtually of almost every organization having a prominent online presence. The main cause behind the proliferation of DDoS attacks is that there is a very low-cost that the attacker has to incur to put such attack in motion. Fortunately, today various prevention methods have been developed to tackle such attacks. Before delving further into understanding about the ways to prevent DDoS attack, let’s first understand what exactly a DDoS attack is!

Understanding DDOS Attack

A DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack is an attempt made by attackers to make computers’ resources inaccessible to its anticipated user. In order to carry out a DDOS attack the attackers never uses their own system; rather they create a network of zombie computers often called as a “Botnet” – that is a hive of computers, to incapacitate a website or a web server.

Let’s understand the basic idea! Now, the attacker notifies all the computers present on the botnet to keep in touch with a particular site or a web server, time and again. This increases traffic on the network that causes in slowing down the speed of a site for the intended users. Unfortunately, at times the traffic can be really high that could even lead to shutting a site completely.

3 Basic Tips to Prevent a DDoS Attack

There are several ways to prevent the DDOS attack; however, here in this guest post I’ll be covering three basic tips that will help you to protect your website from the DDoS attack.

1. Buy More Bandwidth.

One of the easiest methods is to ensure that you have sufficient bandwidth on your web. You’ll be able to tackle lots of low-scale DDOS attacks simply by buying more bandwidth so as to service the requests. How does it help? Well, distributed denial of service is a nothing more than a game of capacity. Let’s suppose you have 10,000 computer systems each distributing 1 Mbps directed towards your way. This means you’re getting 10 GB of data that is hitting your web server every second. Now, that’s causes a lot of traffic!

So to avoid such issue, you need to apply the same rule intended for normal redundancy. According to this technique, if you wish to have more web servers just multiply around diverse datacenters and next make use of load balancing. By spreading your traffic to various servers will help you balance the load and will most likely create large space adequate to handle the incessant increase in traffic.

However, there’s a problem with this method that is buying more bandwidth can be a costly affair. And as you’ll know that the current DDoS attacks are getting large, and can be a lot bigger exceeding your budget limit.

2. Opt for DDoS Mitigation Services.

A lot of network or Internet-service providers render DDoS mitigation capabilities. Look for an internet service provider having the largest DDoS protection and mitigation network, automated tools, and a pool of talented anti-DDoS technicians with the wherewithal to take action in real-time as per the varying DDoS attack characteristics. A viable alternative is to utilize a DDoS prevention appliance, which is specifically intended to discover and prevent distributed denial-of-service attacks.

3. Restricted Connectivity.

In case you have computer systems that are connected to the web directly, a better idea is to properly install/configure your routers and firewall so as to limit the connectivity. For an instance, while receiving some data from a client machine you can only allow traffic to pass from the machine only on a few chosen ports (like HTTP, POP, SMTP etc.) via the firewall.

Wrapping Up!

Websites are largely getting attacked by hackers every second. Denial-of-service attack is insanely getting huge and is creating a lot of problems for business organizations having strong online vicinity. In this guest post you’ll not only understand what a DDoS attack actually means, but will also come to know about a few type of methods to prevent DDoS attacks. Aforementioned are three tips that I’ll recommend you to run through to at least understand where to get started towards building a resilient web network with chances of surviving a DDoS attack.

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by Malik korrich ~ jeudi 18 décembre 2014 0 commentaires

Blackhat SEO poisoning attacks

Recently , i have reported that Google Image search and Bing Image search leads to malware sites especially a blackhole exploit kit page. The reason behind this attack is SEO Poisoning.

What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a collection of techniques to improve the visibility of a website in a search engine's search results. Some of the techniques used by webmasters in

What is BlackHat SEO?

Black Hat SEO , also known as SEO poisoning, is a illegal-technique used by cyber criminals to make their links appear higher than legitimate results. When a user search for related keywords, the infected links appear in the top of the search results

Hacker use one of the following techniques:

*Creating SEO-friendly fake pages related to poplar search topics on  compromised sites
*Cloak malicious content from sphiders and security researchers.
* Iframe injection

Poisoning Image search Results:

As most of search engines filter and find the text-based seo poisoning attacks, Cyber criminals now poisoning the Image search results instead.

They hacked legitimate sites and inject malicoius code.  Whenever a person click the Image of compromised site in the search result , it will redirect him to malware sites.  Sophos reports that bing image-search results are being poisoned more than other search engines.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

6 Web Security Risks of Not Monitoring Internet Activity

Internet access is one of the most important things you can provide to your users. It’s a morale booster, it helps them do their job (for some it is even a vital component of their job,) it enables them to find solutions to problems, research the competition, find new customers, and more. But Internet access comes with a host of threats and if you are not on top of your web security game, allowing your users to have Internet access may cause just as many problems as it can solve. If you are going to provide your users Internet access, consider these top six web security risks of not monitoring Internet activity, and deploy a web security solution to make sure you don’t regret the generosity to your users.

1. Malware
Whether your users download infected files or they just visit compromised websites, malware infections are the single biggest risk to your users from Internet access. Web security applications can scan all files for malware and block access to known infected sites. They can also filter out malicious scripts embedded in web pages, providing strong protection against malware for your users.

2. Phishing
Phishing attacks not only put your users at risk, they can have significant and long lasting impact to your customers, your financials, and your reputation. As much as we raise awareness of phishing attacks, you can read about a new business falling victim almost weekly. Web security software can completely block access to known phishing sites, so even if your users do fall for a phishing email, they cannot submit sensitive information to the attacker’s website.

3. Copyright infringement
Even the best intentions can lead to costly impact to your business, and when users download audio and video files without obtaining the rights to them, the copyright holders can go after your business for compensation. Web security software can block the download of media files, or can filter access based on category to help prevent users from downloading content that might cost you in the long term.

4. Licensing violations
Audio and video are not the only ways a user’s actions can lead to fines and penalties. When users download and install software without obtaining a license for it, the company can be held liable as well. Sites that host cracked software, keygens, and other warez can be blocked completely using web security software, so you can exercise due diligence and avoid a run-in with the Business Software Alliance or other licensing issue.

5. Human Resources incidents
What’s appropriate to access at work and what users may be accustomed to accessing at home are often at opposite ends of the content spectrum, and it’s easy for a user to be offended, or even feel harassed, if exposed to content another user is accessing. This leads to workplace problems including morale issues, teamwork challenges, and can quickly escalate to an incident that involves HR and could lead to someone losing their job. You can avoid all of that by using web security software to block access to content inappropriate for the workplace, and to enforce safe search results in the major search engines.

6. Bandwidth consumption
Media sites such as YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Internet radio and television streaming sites, and others are great for when you are at home, but if only a handful of your users decide to start listening to their favorite music feed, or surreptitiously watching a movie while they should be working, you can quickly find your network without enough bandwidth to support the business critical applications like email. Web security software can block access to the non-business critical sites, and throttle bandwidth consumption for the sites you do want to allow, to ensure there is enough available for what your network really needs.

7. Wasting time
How often has a “quick” web search or social media check-in caused you to lose track of time? Now multiply that by the number of users on your network, who will do exactly the same thing, and you can quickly see how you can lose hours of productivity each day. Web security software can block access to social media sites, but the best products can instead simply limit the amount of total time or the time frames when users can use the web for recreational purposes. A few minutes here and there is a perfectly good way to ensure morale doesn’t suffer, and if a user wants to spend their lunch break updating their wall…what’s the harm in that, as long as they get back to work at the end of their lunch?

So don’t think web access without addressing web security. Web security applications can monitor access, filter out malware, block access to phishing sites or repositories, prevent the download of files that might contain copyrighted material, restrict the amount of bandwidth burned on streaming media, and even keep users from wasting time on social media sites. Web security applications are a critical component of your Internet security, and help to ensure that Internet access is a benefit, and not a risk to your company.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

10 System Admin Tools to Help You Secure Your Network

System admins are frequently bombarded with security concerns, requests, alerts, news items, “did you see this?!” emails, and more. Keeping up with all the aspects of network security can seem like an overwhelming task, but in this post we’re going to look at ten tools a system admin can use to help secure their network. Some you may be familiar with, like network security software, while others may come as a surprise, like your email client; but all will help you to stay ahead of the bad guys, keep yourself informed of the latest threats, and maintain the security of your network.

1. Network security software
When we talk about network security software, we’re talking about a class of product more than any specific tool, and how important it is for you to have an application or small group of applications that can help you to accomplish most of your tasks. There are simply too many things for any one admin to do by hand, and network security software applications help to automate the heavy lifting and ensure that you can keep up with the workload. Look for network security software that multitasks. Think about it as a Swiss Army knife of software packages that includes many of the other items on this list.

2. Vulnerability scanner
A good vulnerability scanner is a key part of any toolkit, and should be used by server admins and security engineers alike. The top network security software apps will include a scanner that has a database of the thousands of vulnerabilities that could exist on your network, so that you can quickly, easily and regularly scan your network to ensure you systems are up-to-date, configured properly and secured.

3. Port scanner
A port scanner is another regular tool that should be in your network security software application. Attackers regularly scan your Internet connection looking for ways in and so should you. But you should also scan internally so you can find unauthorized services or misconfigured systems, and to validate your internal firewalls are set up correctly.

4. Patching software
Patching operating systems and third party applications is one of the most important, regularly recurring tasks a sys admin has. Network security software that can automate this, and handle the hundreds of other applications on your network, is the only realistic way you can keep up with this.

5. Auditing software
Auditing software may strike you as a strange recommendation at first, but consider all those apps you are trying to patch. How can you be sure you have no vulnerabilities on your systems if your users can install anything on your systems? How are you going to maintain licensing compliance if you don’t know who has installed what from \software? Network security software may also include software and hardware inventory components to help you stay informed and secure.

6. Secure remote clients
Telnet, older versions of PCAnyWhere and several of the web-based remote access apps that are out there all have a common issue - they’re not secure. Use SSH v2 or later for secure access to all CLI-based systems, and the most secure versions of Remote Desktop Protocol to manage Windows boxes. Using strong encryption, good passwords, lockout policies and, when possible, mutual authentication between client and host, will help to ensure no one sniffs credentials or brute-forces their way into a system. If you have two-factor authentication in your environment, ensure that every system possible uses it to further reduce your risk from unauthorized access.

7. A good network analyzer
Whether you like the open source WireShark, the free Microsoft tool NetMon, or one of the many other commercial network analysis tools, having a good “sniffer” is key to helping secure and analyze systems. There is simply no way that’s more effective to figure out just what is going on between networked systems than to see the traffic first hand.

8. Network tools
Whenever you are dealing with connections from foreign systems, you will find the need to check network addresses, routes and more. Having good tools like DIG, WHOIS, HOST, TCPING and others close at hand makes network evaluation a breeze.

9. Log parsing software
Securing systems means going through logs; lots of them. Web logs, access logs, system logs, security logs, SNMP logs, syslog logs – the list goes on and on. Having software that can quickly and easily parse through logs is critical. Everyone has their favorite. Some install locally like LogParser, while others run on servers like Splunk. Whichever you prefer, get a good log parser to help wade through what can be millions of entries quickly and easily so you can find events you need to check.

10. Your email client
Knowledge is power, and the best way to amass that knowledge is to stay informed. Whether you subscribe to email bulletins, security alerts, or RSS feeds, your email client can provide you the first indications that something new is out there, and also what you need to do to protect your systems from the threat. Zero day exploits, out of band patches, best practices and more, can all be yours if you simply join the right distribution lists and subscribe to the right lists.

These 10 system admin tools are a great start towards building your toolkit for security. Network security software plays a major role in this toolkit, which you supplement with other tools and the information you need to maintain a secure environment.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

Free Online Tools to Check your Blog For Malware Scripts

Malware is a malicious piece of code that messes up with the functionalities of your website or blogs and once it gained access to them they can collect sensitive information from your websites. When we add third-party widgets or plugins to our blogs we don’t know about what sort of scripts are placed in there or when we go for a free template for our blogs then also we don’t know what’s placed in there. As prevention, we can check our blog for malware after applying templates or widgets to make sure our blogs are free from malware. In this article we will tell you free online tools to check your blog for malware scripts.

These days bloggers is its self-monitoring blogs for malware scripts and if any found they will add a warning message of malware each time user sees your blog and also shoot you email in webmaster tools. This will bear upon your reputation among your readers and they might be uncomfortable in seeing your blog again in a fear of malware. So it is better that you ascertain out your blog for malware and try to resolve before blogger checks it.

Free Online Tools to Check your Blog For Malware Scripts

Sucuri.net

Sucuri provides free online check for malware scripts placed on your blogs and list out basic information about the check. You can use its paid version for in-depth analysis and it is run round the clock. Block suspicious activities, notifying you if something is going wrong on your blog. Works all the time for you even when you are catching some Z's. 

Visit http://sitecheck2.sucuri.net/ and insert your blog URL in Scan website text box, then press Scan Website button to initiate the procedure.

Virustotal

Virustotal is the product of Google, it is actually a free service which analyzes your blogs for suspicious files and URLS. It also detects viruses, Trojans, worms and of course all types of malware. You can bank on this service as it is provided by Google. 

Visit virustotal.com and Select the URL tab and insert your blog URL in the text box, then press scan it button rest will be done by Virustotal.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

Make Your Blogger Blog Private or Give Access to Specific users

There could be various reasons for which a blogger would like to make his/ her blog private or give access to specific people. Some are coming into my mind which I am sharing with you is we create widgets for our blogs or to share with other people through our blogs and we normally create a separate blog for testing purpose. These cases of blogs are to be meant for public users they are for developers or webmasters of that blog. So today the topic which I am covering on my blog is make your blogger blog private or give access to specific users.

Make Your Blogger Blog Private or Give Access to Specific users

By default your blog is set to be viewed as public. Which means anyone on the internet can view your blog. Stick with the below steps carefully.

Login to your blogger blog and go to settings >> Basic settings >> Blog Readers and click on edit see below video for reference.

Make your Blog private

Once you have clicked edit, select Private –only blog readers radio button and click on save changes this will make your blogger blog private and only visible to blog admin and authors. See below pictorial representation to obtain the clean depiction.

Give Access to Specific users

To give access to specific users to your blog select private –Only these readers’ option and click on +Add readers link this will open text area. In this text area, enter email address of those who you would like to give access to your blog, see below image to get a clear idea. Remember they will have to login before they can see your web log.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires

How to Remove a Virus Using Command Prompt

Dear  readers today I am going to tell you  How to Remove a Virus Using Command Prompt
 Virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect your computer. These viruses can spread via USB/flash drive or from one computer to other computer by few written codes. There are many antivirus software available to remove viruses from computer. But there are some viruses or suspicious files which can’t be removed by any antivirus software. Some suspicious files such as autorun.inf initiate all the viruses in pc. These files must be removed for safe operation of your pc, because they may lead to data loss, software damages etc. Such viruses and files can be removed by using cmd. In this article we will discuss how to remove a virus using command prompt. Following steps can be used to remove a virus using command prompt from your computer.

• Go to start menu and type “cmd” in the search box or Start>all programs>accessories>command prompt.

• Open the infected drive such as write , g: to go to G drive.
• Now type dir/w/a . It will show all the files of the drive including hidden files.

• Locate AUTORUN.INF or any Virus and other suspicious files in the directory.

there was no virus in my drive so only autorun.inf is been highlighted.

• Type command attrib  -r –a –s –h to remove attributes of corresponding file.

Type del autorun.inf to delete autorun.inf file.

• Now type del virus name.exe t delete it, eg : del newfolder.exe .

(You can also delete viruses by using following steps:

• When you find an Autorun.inf file or any other unusual .exe file just rename it.

Syntax for rename is (rename filename.extension new name ,  for example: (rename autorun.inf virus) to rename autorun.inf file. Here I have renamed it by “virus”.

• Now you can access the defected drive without affecting the virus.
• To delete the renamed file go to the defected drive and select the file you renamed.

Now delete the harmful renamed files.)

You have deleted that virus successfully but sometimes virus resides in the Recycler folder.To locate this folder:

• Type cd recycler command.

• Again type dir/w/a  to locate all file of the folder.
• Identify malicious files and delete them using above commands.

Follow the above steps carefully and i think this information is enough to remove a virus using command prompt easily.

Important: Make sure that no other processes being running while performing these actions. Best of luck.

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by Malik korrich ~ 0 commentaires