Category: Internet Stuff

Internet updates, reviews and technology

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How to Hide Apache2 and PHP version without using mod_security in Ubuntu Linux

Although security by obscurity is not the best policy to protect your IS assets, but it is still useful to thwarts simple network scanner or newbie crackers.

Note: This tip is written for Ubuntu Linux, the steps is similar to other GNU/Linux distro, albeit with a slight variant.

Hiding Apache2 version
Edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add these lines at the end of the file:
ServerSignature Off
ServerTokens Prod

Restart Apache2
[bash]
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
[/bash]

Hiding PHP version
Edit /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini file

Find these lines, and switch it off:
expose_php = Off
display_errors = Off

Additionally you may disable certain ‘risky’ functions in php by editing the disable_functions line:
disable_functions = phpinfo, system,show_source,

Finally, you may restart Apache2 web server.
[bash]
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
[/bash]

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Does anyone here still uses Java Applets?

When I was studying in the university (more than 10 years ago), I learn how to build and embed Java Applets on web pages using Java 1.0 (after that Java 1.2), the functionality is quite limited since there’s no default 3D support in Java yet. Compared to Flash (then Flash 3.0 during that time), Java Applet is more suitable for math and scientific application, generating graphs and kaleidoscope base on mathematical formula, and everything.

duke java logo

Heck, Netscape Navigator still rules the day during that time. But what about now? With the technology explosion, does anyone here still use Java Applets?

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Where all the Blog XML RPC ping sites have gone…?

I found out something interesting when I’ve gone through my WordPress setting, it seems that the once famous XML-RPC ping sites are either out-of-service or have been taken down.

The one standing up until today is Ping-o-Matic and venerable Weblogs (the first blog XML-RPC ping service).

I once tried to run one of such services to in order to study spam blogs behavior, but it ends up eating too much server resources with too much noise coming from all the submission, I ended the experiment just over one-year.

Probably this is what happening around the world, ping sites gotten shut-down because of being overwhelmed. The remaining option of promoting blog posts is through social status updating site such as Facebook, Twitter and Buzz (also identi.ca!).

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3 Reasons Behind why I Hate CPanel Web Hosting

Adding Subdomain / Domain creates a subdirectory
Adding Subdomain, and add-on Domain is a pain-in-the-ass as it creates a subdirectory in the root web directory, meaning that any web-users can abuse this by adding trailing subdirectory ‘subdomain’ http://yourdomain.com/subdomain/ to access http://subdomain.yourdomain.com/

Outdated Pre-package Software
Cpanel came with outdated pre-packaged software, PHP, MySQL and PostgreSQL and other libraries that is outdated compared to the one available on the host operating system. The problem is not about how outdated the software packages are, but the how often these package are being patched. CPanel vendor very notorious for not providing timely patches which would compromise the security of the web application.

Can’t change DNS setting easily from the panel
Unlike DirectAdmin, CPanel does not offer an easy way to change DNS record of domain easily as the option is not offered by default to the control panel. Although this can be mitigated by having your domain points to a 3rd party NS, it’s still one of the thing that gets me down with CPanel.

My Thoughts
CPanel is an excellent control panel for beginner as it offers a lot of options and functionality with a simple user-interface. However, personally, I prefer to use other control panel such as DirectAdmin or Plesk for my web hosting use.

p/s: Currently I’m on VPS without standard control panel.

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Google Code Hosting now supports Git!

Great news to all developers out there! Google Code hosting service now supports Git in addition to Subversion (SVN) and Mercurial. Probably the top Google Code wishlish, I’m sure open source developers appreciates Google decision to offer Git support on its free open source code hosting service.

New and existing projects may continue to use SVN and Mercurial as version control and those who wished to switch to Git may do so from the “Administer” option in the Google Code Project Dashboard

Some note about Google Code Git support:

  • Requires at least Git 1.6.6
  • Repo size limit 4GiB
  • Push pack limit of 500 MiB (soon to be lifted)
Google Code Git

For more information about Git support in Google Code, please read: Google Code Git FAQ