Hackosis

If you have a Wordpress blog it is crucial that you do certain things to keep it secure. Blogsecurify can help you accomplish this by scanning your Wordpress web blog for known vulnerabilities.

From the blogsecurify.com:

If you wish not to modify your template, they also provide a Wordpress plugin. Just drop it in your plugins directory and activate.

[via gnucitizen.com]

HP just announced the release of a new Windows security tool named Scrawlr – “SQL Injector and Crawler”.

image by cogdogblog

Scrawlr will crawl up to 1500 pages on your web site to check for the possibility of SQL injection points. More info:

Download Scrawlr from the HP site. [via hackademix.net]

This modded Eveready flashlight is acually brighter than a $95 dollar SureFire E2:

Tech.shantanugoel.com writes about how to create a do-it-yourself security system using nothing more than a Linux PC, Webcam, and a Twitter account.

No more brother, Mother, burglar, etc. stepping into your private space or home with out you knowing. Also, don’t forget about enabling Twitter mobile alerts for when a PC might be far from reach.

image via MShades

Similar to the Hat:

Thanks to Dave for the tip!

EDIT: This seems to be a hoax as confirmed by Gizmodo. My apologies.

Are you running Windows Vista? Chances are you are also sporting a dual core CPU.

Did you know that Vista doesn’t take advantage of more than one core during boot? Go Microsoft!

Fortunately, you can easily change this using the system configuration editor.

1. Open the run box by pressing the Windows button + R.

2. Type ‘msconfig’ in the run box:

3. Click on the Boot tab, then click the Advanced options… button:

4. Click the check box next to Number of Processors and select the total number of cores that you wish to use:

Nice! Let us know how much this decreases your boot time in Windows Vista.

Readers – do you have any tips and tricks like this one? We would love to hear them.

PHP Speedy is a PHP script by aciddrop.com that can increase your web site loading time by as much as 500%.

The key to this decrease in loading time is “making fewer HTTP requests, adding a far-future expires header, gzipping your page’s components, and minifying your JavaScript, CSS and HTML”. PHP Speedy accomplishes all of these techniques.

Now, there is also a PHP Speedy Wordpress plugin available. It would be interesting to see a comparison between PHP Speedy and WP Super Cache.

Personally, I haven’t tested PHP Speedy, but it looks promising. Let me know if you have tried PHP Speedy and what your results are.

PHP Speedy [via codefusionlab.co.cc]

MySQL is an excellent open source database system. Replication is a great way to keep data redundant in case of a server crash. However, replication should not take the place of backups in case of data corruption or mis-entered data – as this data will also be replicated to the slave.

MySQL replication takes place in a master-slave configuration. Be aware that by using the configuration – only changes made on the master are replicated to the slave. Any changes on the slave will not be replicated to the master.

Following the steps below, you can have MySQL replication setup in no time at all.

Source: MySQL Dev Site
Read the rest of this entry …

If you haven’t noticed, my posting has slowed to a crawl lately. I have been very busy at working on maintaining hundreds of systems and that leaves little time for much else. Enough with excuses and on to a bash script that you might be interested in.

image by Kirill

Ever have bandwidth issues and wish you could automated the testing process instead of manually testing every other hour of the day? I have.

By using the bash script below we are able to automate an upload and download of a file and email the speed results.

#!/bin/sh

cd /path/to/choosen/working/dir
filename="/path/to/test.file"
hostname="ftp.server.com"
username="user"
password="password"
echo -e "***FTP SERVER DOWNLOAD SPEED***\n" >> speedtest.log
ftp -inv $hostname >> speedtest.log  <> speedtest.log
ftp -inv $hostname >> speedtest.log  <> email.log
mail -s "Speed Test Results" youremail@whateva.com < /path/to/choosen/working/dir/email.log
rm /path/to/choosen/working/dir/speedtest.log
rm /path/to/choosen/working/dir/email.log

Now we need to add it to cron for execution every hour:

Add the following to your crontab file:

Don't forget to chmod 755 the script to make it executable. I have also attached the script in case of any formatting issues on this web page.

FTP Speed Test Bash Script

If you have any questions about how this script works, please leave a comment and I will be glad to explain.