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Did you know that Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome like to display your passwords in plain text? No? Well, they sure do.
If you want to see what I’m talking about, follow the steps below.
Open Firefox.
Click on the Firefox Menu at the top left corner.
Select Options, then click on Options.
Click on the Security tab at the top.
Click the Saved Passwords… button. This will open up the Saved Passwords box. Now click on Show Passwords Button.
Example Below:
Surprise!
Did your jaw just hit the floor? I know mine did the first time I saw what Firefox was hiding from me all this time.
Now let’s open up Google Chrome and click Settings.
Once you get into your settings, scroll all the way to the bottom and click on Show advance settings…
Look for the section Passwords and forms and click the Manage saved passwords link.
Select the site where you saved your password and click Show button.
Okay, I’m done with the surprises.
So how did Firefox and Google Chrome get my passwords in the first place?
To get the answer you must also answer this question: Have you ever seen the following notification in your web browser?
Mozilla Firefox:
Google Chrome:
Whenever you clicked on the shiny button “Remember Password” in Firefox or “Save Password” in Chrome, the site username and password are saved within the web browser – and as you also saw – displayed in plain simple text.
Anyone can walk up to your computer and take a quick look at your web browsers history/settings. Just imagine you’re at the office and you step away from your computer and a nosy/curious coworker gets the chance to take a look. That is why it’s important to always lock down your computer before you step away from your desk.
Additionally, say you’re unlucky enough to have some malicious software installed on your computer which happens to allow the hacker gain remote control of your desktop. The hacker will only have to wait until you are away from your computer to check your saved passwords.
What if you sent your computer out to a repair shop and they “just happened to” take a look at your saved passwords? It only takes a few seconds for them to snoop around on your computer and do who-knows-what with your credentials. There are a lot of different ways these passwords can be intercepted. This just happens to be one method of interception that can be avoided.
So what’s the work-around and how do I keep my passwords safe? Fortunately there are plenty of third party plug-ins people use with their web browsers. Perhaps you can recommend what plug-in works best for you in the comment section below.
I found a plugin called LastPass. With 254,540 users and 827 reviews just for the Firefox plugin alone seems to be a great alternative. Best thing about this plugin is that it also works with the Google Chrome web browser.
OpenCart is an open source PHP based ecommerce solution, and in this tutorial, I will show you how to get it up and running here at Winhost. First, I suggest you create a MySQL database through the Control Panel.
Click on the Sites tab.
Click on the Manage link and then click on the MySQL button.
Click the Add button and enter the values for Database Name, Database User, and Quota. Click the Create button to finish creating the database. Now click on the Manage link and record the connection information (Database Name, Database Server, Database User, and Database Password) on a piece of paper or a text editor such as Notepad.
Next, you’ll need to obtain the source download from the OpenCart website.
Extract the contents using a decompression program such as WinZip or 7-Zip. Navigate to the upload folder of the extracted files. Rename the php.ini file to user.ini and create a web.config file with this configuration:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <configuration> <system.webServer> <!-- Set the default document --> <defaultDocument> <files> <remove value="index.php" /> <add value="index.php" /> </files> </defaultDocument> </system.webServer> </configuration>
The file structure should look like this:
We rename the php.ini file to user.ini because the php.ini settings are global and cannot be accessed by an individual user. Please read our other blog for more information. If you want a list of settings that you can manipulate in the user.ini file, please see these links on the official PHP site and look at the Changeable column.
http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.modes.php
http://php.net/manual/en/ini.core.php
We add the web.config file so that “index.php” will load automatically. Now upload the files to the root of your site account, preserving the directory structure as shown here:
Now browse to your site using either your domain name (if you have already set it up correctly) or Secondary Web URL to start the installation.
Check I agree to the license and the Continue button to proceed.
After a PHP check, click on the Continue button to proceed.
Enter the MySQL connection credentials you recorded earlier and fill out the information for the admin account. Click on the Continue button to proceed.
The installation has been completed. The last thing you should do is to delete the /install directory using FTP.
You can start developing your site or make other configuration changes.
If you’re reading this it’s likely that your email account was recently hacked and now you’re wondering how it happened, why it happened to you. Or maybe you’re just wondering how you can prevent it from happening to you.
Let me start off by saying that there are many different ways an email account can be compromised. In this article I’ll cover three of those methods.
Also note that these aren’t the only way an email account can get compromised. People are always inventing new ways of compromising an email account/system. So by the time you finish reading this article, it’s likely that they will have come up with a few new techniques.
Now lets imagine you’re at the local coffee shop sipping on some hot coffee. You open your laptop and connect to the coffee shop’s WiFi. Why not, it’s free Internet, right?
Now it’s time to check your email messages because you are expecting important news. You open the email client on your computer and start browsing the Internet for, you know, important stuff. An hour passes by and you go on your way to work, home, or school. But did you notice the person sitting across from you with their laptop? He just took your email credentials while you weren’t looking. But how did it happen?
Did it happen while you were in the bathroom?
No.
Did it happen when you went for yet another cup of joe?
Nope.
So how did that person steal your email information with out even coming close to your computer?
Ever heard of a Man in the Middle attack? To put a MITM attack in simplest terms, some malicious so and so sets up their computer to act like a router and tricks your computer into thinking that the computer actually is the router. Then the router thinks the shady computer – in the middle of the connection – is your computer.
Think of it as someone tapping into your network connection. Once this starts happening they can view all kinds of fun packets coming from your computer to the mail server (or to any server). Each time you make a connection to the mail server you are sending your authentication credentials through the bad guy’s computer.
From there it’s easy to use a program to filter out all packets containing login credentials. This includes your Facebook, Twitter, and bank account login information as well. Everything.
So does that mean it would be better to just stay away from your local coffee shop?
Hey, no need to be drastic! You can still go and you can still surf the Internet but it may be best if you didn’t use the coffee shop’s Internet connection. Personally, I don’t trust any network that I don’t own or control.
A nice work-around would be to use the Internet connection on your smart phone. Most smart phones have the capability of turning into a password protected Wifi “hot spot.” They also have the capability to tether the smart phone to your laptop. But, of course you will be using your phone service provider’s data plan.
So if I protect myself from that shady “man in the middle,” I’m safe, right?
Not exactly.
Another way your email account could be compromised is with a virus/malware being installed on your computer without your knowledge. This method is the most common and likely way that your email account (and everything else on your computer) can be compromised. I’ve seen what some of these viruses and malware are capable of doing, and it’s scary stuff.
Some of the virus/malware infections come with a nice little tool called a keylogger. What it basically does it logs all your key strokes and sends them to a server controlled by whoever infected your computer with the virus/malware. So any time you enter a username and password, the keystrokes are logged before the login request is sent. It doesn’t matter that the connection from your computer to the mail server is encrypted.
So how did this software get onto your system, or how can you prevent it from being installed on your system?
You can start by practicing the following:
The third way an email account can be compromised is by social engineering. Some email systems come with a nifty “Forgot your password?” tool. So what’s the big deal about this feature? Well, when you were setting up your email account you weren’t thinking twice and just answered the security questions truthfully. For example the signup form has the following questions:
You had to pick two of them and answered the two question correctly. No harm done right?
Wrong. The question/answer that you’ve set up with your email account should actually be considered to be your second and third passwords. Why? Because the correct answers to these questions gains access to the email account.
It would be best to answer these questions kind of incorrectly. So, let’s say you chose Which street did grow up on? and What is your mother’s maiden name? and answer to the first question is Main St. and the answer to the next question is Smith.
Instead of using the correct answers, you can add a extra character befor the real answer. For example @Main St. and @Smith. If the system doesn’t allow these type of characters then you can also use a letter before the real answer. For example: QMain St. and QSmith . That way if the malicious person finds out the real information, they will still have a hard time getting into your email account.
You must be wondering how these people even get the information in order to gain access to your email account using the security questions method. The answer is very easy. In this day and age most of us use social media sites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. What’s the problem with social media? Well, the problem is we like to give out to much information.
We all like to share share share. Sometimes we don’t realize it, but we give out too much information. So much information that it makes it easy for a malicious person to gain access to your email account using the security question method.
If you keep these things in mind and think about security in new ways, you will protect yourself from a lot of potential headaches.
Sometimes you just want to tear everything down and then build it back up. Maybe you are tired of your old nopCommerce site and want to try out WordPress.
Maybe you have an older version of an app in your hosting space and you want to upgrade, but first you need to remove the current installation.
Whatever the reason, the support department is often asked, “How do I reset my hosting space?”
Well, there isn’t a tool available in Control Panel to do this, so I have provided the following guide for you to use to clean out your hosting space and return it to “factory default” in two broad steps.
Backing up and removing your database
Backing up your site’s files and then removing them
You might have had to mark a few sub directories as application starting points in the past; I recommend that you unmark them first in order to avoid potential permissions issues.
If you cannot delete some of your files and directories at this point, try recycling your application pool. Sometimes web applications do not “let go” of a file or directory properly, and you will not be able to delete a file while it is in use. Recycling your application pool should remove the lock.
If you tried recycling your application pool but still cannot delete a file, open up a ticket with the support department and ask us to manually remove the files from the server.
Make sure to provide us with a copy of your FTP log, just so we know that you tried to delete the files yourself.
And there you have it, we now have a completely clean hosting space.
Your database has been backed up and removed, so we don’t have to worry about old table data conflicting with new.
Also, all of your application starting points have been removed, and you have regained all of your disk space allotment on the web server.
Here are some small tips you can use to make your WordPress site a bit more secure and slightly increase performance. Make sure the version of WordPress you’re running is the most recent version. This will ensure any security vulnerabilities found in the Content Management System will be addressed.
To perform an in-place upgrade of WordPress:
1) Log into WordPress as the admin user.
2) On the Dashboard, it should say WordPress x.x.x is available! Click on the Please update now link.
3) Click the Update Now button.
4) Finished!
Alternatively, you can perform a manual upgrade by:
1) Instead of clicking the Upgrade Now button, click Download x.x.x
2) Extract the .zip file’s contents.
3) Upload the files using FTP, matching the same directory structure.
4) Once you refresh the admin screen in the browser, you should get an Update WordPress Database button. Click on it and then the Continue button to complete the process.
You can also add an extra layer of security for the admin section. Ruslan’s Blog shows you how.
According to IIS7 Manager, you can improve the performance a bit by moving the index.php file to the top of the Default Document list.
I also suggest you disable Directory Browsing.
Take note that any changes you make through IIS7 Manager will be written to your web.config file, so you should always make a backup of it before proceeding.
Did you know there are multiple ways of installing/deploying your favorite Content Management System at Winhost? Below, I provide 3 general guidelines and briefly explain the benefits/drawbacks of each. (I’ll be using DotNetNuke as an example.)
Configuring DotNetNuke example:
Benefits: The benefit of using this method is that you do not have to upload any files.
Drawbacks: A slight drawback is that CMS version might not be the latest. This may not be a problem as most CMS nowadays have upgrade modules which you can invoke after the install.
Please also note using the App Installer tool will wipe out any files in the installation directory. If you have files in the root, this is not a good idea. Make sure you make a backup copy of your site before using the App Installer tool.
If you install the application to a sub-directory, it will also mark it as an application starting point. If you have multiple apps running on your site, you will need to take this into consideration if you need to make web.config modifications.
Benefits: The benefit of using this method is that you can use the latest version of the CMS or install a CMS that is not available through the App Installer such as OpenCart.
Drawbacks: The drawback is that you need to be more aware of the CMS’ requirements and may need to perform more steps to configure it properly. It also may not be a viable option if the CMS is particularly large, and you have a slow Internet connection (i.e. it would take a very long time to upload the files).
10. For this example, I will use Import publish profile (recommended). Below is a sample screen shot, and I’ve manually entered the database connection string (found in the Control Panel). Click on the Validate Connection button. If it does not say Connected Successfully, then you may have entered the wrong settings or you may have antivirus/firewall software blocking the connection. Click on Save and Continue a few times. (Don’t worry if you get a warning about site compatibility. It should still work.)
11. You will now see a Preview screen, and you can choose what you want to publish. Click Continue when you are done checking the files/database you want to update.
12. You will get a Publishing – Complete message when you are done.
Benefits: The greatest benefit to this method is that you can develop your site locally.
Drawbacks: The drawback with this method is that you may need to perform a lot of prerequisite setup prior to the installation. Configuring changes locally may also not work when you deploy to Winhost. You may still need to make some further alterations to the web.config file.
As with Method 1, you need to be careful when publishing as files in the destination could be overwritten. Always make a backup of your site prior to publishing.
You may also want to spend some time reading this great post from one of our customers on the forums:
http://forum.winhost.com/showthread.php?t=8565&highlight=dnn+installation
I know you absolutely love the SmarterMail webmail that we provide with your account. What’s not to love? It’s old fashioned, clunky, confusing – perfect!
But you don’t have to be stuck with it. You can “pop” your email boxes using Gmail. “Pop” is just nerd slang for “check.” What we’re talking about here is reading and replying to mail that comes in to the addresses that you’ve set up on your domain name, but doing it all through the Gmail interface, and that’s pretty cool.
This is not a tutorial for using Google Apps mail with your domain. We already have one of those in our forum. This tutorial will show you how to keep your mail service here at Winhost, but use Gmail as your email program.
You have a Gmail account, right? If not, go set one up, then we can get started.
Log in to Gmail and click the Settings gear and select Settings.
Click Accounts and Import.
Click Add a POP3 mail account you own. In the lovely orange popup window that opens, enter the email address that you want to check using Gmail. Click Next Step.
Next you’ll be on the mail settings page of the popup window. There are a lot of variables here (it’s Google, after all), but we’ll concentrate on the simplest, quickest setup.
Username is your complete email address, not just the part before @.
Password is the POP account password that you entered into Control Panel when you set up the email address.
POP Server should be pre-populated with mail.yourhosteddomainname.com.
Everything else can be left in its default state. If you do not intend to use Gmail exclusively, check the box for “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server,” that will allow you to pull your mail down from another source in addition to Gmail.
But beware, if you use that option and your Winhost email boxes get full, your mail will bounce. To prevent that ever happening, do not check “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server.”
Click Add Account.
The next window will verify that your account has been added.
It will also ask if you want to be able to send mail “as” the new address. If you intend to use Gmail as your only email client, or if you ever want to respond to the incoming mail for your newly set up account, select Yes, I want to be able to send mail as…
Click Next Step.
If you selected “No” in the previous window, you’re finished.
The end.
But you didn’t select “No,” did you? Good! You’re going to want to be able to send mail from Gmail “as” yourself.
So in the next window simply enter your name. This is the name you want to appear as the sender. Leave Treat as an alias checked.
Click Next Step.
Next the cheerful Google robots are going to ask if you want to send mail through their SMTP server or if you want to send through your domain. It’s much easier to leave the default Send through Gmail checked. And since this is the easy setup guide, that’s just what we’ll do.
Click Next Step.
Before Gmail will let you send mail as yourself they want to make sure that you are who you say you are. Otherwise you could send mail as me — or someone important like Scott Guthrie or Larry the Cable Guy. To get the verification ball rolling, just click Send Verification.
Now you could log in to your POP account with your desktop email client, or use SmarterMail webmail to pick up the Google verification email. But since you’re already checking mail for your address using Gmail, you should be able to click Inbox on the upper left side of the Gmail window and – through the miracle of modern technology – pick up the verification email right there.
Try it. I’ll wait here.
Once you’ve copied the verification code from the email, just enter it into the box in the popup window and click Verify.
The popup window will disappear and nothing else will happen.
Which is good, because nothing else needs to happen. You’re all set!
Speaking of Google, why not join our circles on Google+? We’re waiting for you.
Our team has discovered that since the launch of Windows 2012 and IIS 8 there have been some issues with installing and running some of the more popular Content Management Systems such as DotNetNuke and Orchard.
The problem can be resolved by setting the Trust Level to Full in the web.config file. To do this:
If you find that you’re having difficulties with other Content Management Systems, you might want to try setting the Trust Level to Full as well to see if that will correct the problem.