Mrs. Mecomber's Scrapbook

After a massive blog hack attack, I’m much more keen to the tools and techniques for hardening my WordPress installation. I have found some very valuable resources, so I thought I’d share them here with you. Do realize that hacks on WordPress blogs has risen exponentially. Take care to keep your WordPress sites secure. WordPress [...]

When you connect to the Internet, you not only receive information, you release information. Your computer has identifiable data that is displayed for others to see (mostly advertisers and tracking counters such as Google Analytics or StatCounter). Some information is necessary, such as the web browser you use. This information helps the website properly load [...]

Yikes. According to CNet, more than 2 million computers in the the United States host botnets! Botnets are malicious programs that infect computers. They are spread through viruses and worms, and are controlled by a “master” somewhere on the Internet. Botnets spew out spam, more viruses and worms, and phishing attacks. Computers under the control [...]

So you have a firewall. How do you know that the firewall is working properly? Here’s a terrific resource for checking your firewall strength: GRC Shields Up! The site has been around a long, long time (I remember it waaaay back about 6 years ago now! Maybe even older!). I rely on it to tell [...]

That‘s gotta hurt. Dell has inadvertently shipped replacement motherboards for its PowerEdge servers that are infected with the Spybot worm. The malware affects servers running Windows, but not other operating systems. The worm can be triggered if users run an update to either the Unified Server Configurator (USC) or 32-bit Diagnostics on the server. According [...]

This news does not surprise me. I have long lamented the weak security measures of banks and credit card companies. For one, I am astounded that banks require you to make weak passwords– 8 to 10 characters, all letters and/or numbers. That is SO easy to crack! My Photobucket account has a better password than [...]