HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:59:49 GMT Server: Apache Content-Length: 0 Connection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Mirroring an Entire Site using Rsync over SSH

Sometimes there is an urgent need for creating an exact duplicate or "mirror" of a web site on a separate server. This could be needed for creating Round Robin Setups, Load-Balancing, Failovers, or for just plain vanilla backups. In the past I have used a lot of different methods to copy data from one server to another, including creating an archive of the whole directory and then using scp to send the file over, creating an archive and then encrypting it and then sending that file over using ftp, curl, etc., and my persistence at learning new ways to do things has paid off because now I use rsync to keep an exact replica of the entire directory on an external server, without having to use all the CPU and resources of other mirroring methods.

Tags: rsync, ssh
Posted in Security | Published on April 10, 2009 |3 Comments »

SSI in Htaccess for ErrorDocuments, DirectoryIndexing, SEO

3-Part article covering practical implementation of 3 advanced .htaccess features. Discover an easy way to boost your SEO the AskApache way (focus on visitors), a tip you might keep and use for life. Get some cool security tricks to use against spammers, crackers, and other nefarious sorts. Take your site's error handling to the next level, enhanced ErrorDocuments that go beyond 404's.

Posted in Htaccess | Published on March 9, 2009 |1 Comment »

Password Protection Plugin Status

Enumerating Permissions can be Annoying

Don’t ask me how because I won’t tell you, but on one of the hosts I was testing on that did not allow direct access I was able to get the Apache server running as dhapache to erroneously write a file into my users blog directory. This is a big security no-no and I now have my .htaccess file written into the blog directory where it should go, but instead of my php script’s user having write access to the file so I can modify it, its owned by dhapache! Because the file is owned by dhapache I shouldn’t even be allowed to know it exists, but there it is. So the next step was to try and take ownership of the .htaccess file so that I could modify it. I tried and tried but was unsuccessful, I couldn’t modify it so that was another dead end. Actually it took me awhile to figure out how to remove the file from my directory. Being that it was owned by dhapache I couldn’t delete or modify it using my php process or even through ftp/ssh! Sysadmins regularly run find commands that search the servers for any files owned by dhapache that should not be there as this is a big red flag that someone has found a way to manipulate dhapache which could potentially lead to modifying dhapache-owned server config files, which sometimes is all it takes to hack your website and server.. Luckily I was able to delete it by basically running the hack again to overwrite the file.

Posted in WordPress | Published on March 1, 2009 |4 Comments »

THE Ultimate Htaccess

Skip this - still under edit

I discovered these tips and tricks mostly while working as a network security penetration specialist hired to find security holes in web hosting environments. Shared hosting is the most common and cheapest form of web-hosting where multiple customers are placed on a single machine and "share" the resources (CPU/RAM/SPACE). The machines are configured to basically ONLY do HTTP and FTP. No shells or any interactive logins, no ssh, just FTP access. That is when I started examining htaccess files in great detail and learned about the incredible untapped power of htaccess. For 99% of the worlds best Apache admins, they don't use .htaccess much, if AT ALL. It's much easier, safer, and faster to configure Apache using the httpd.conf file instead. However, this file is almost never readable on shared-hosts, and I've never seen it writable. So the only avenue left for those on shared-hosting was and is the .htaccess file, and holy freaking fiber-optics.. it's almost as powerful as httpd.conf itself!

Most all .htaccess code works in the httpd.conf file, but not all httpd.conf code works in .htaccess files, around 50%. So all the best Apache admins and programmers never used .htaccess files. There was no incentive for those with access to httpd.conf to use htaccess, and the gap grew. It's common to see "computer gurus" on forums and mailing lists rail against all uses and users of .htaccess files, smugly announcing the well known problems with .htaccess files compared with httpd.conf - I wonder if these "gurus" know the history of the htaccess file, like it's use in the earliest versions of the HTTP Server- NCSA's HTTPd, which BTW, became known as Apache HTTP. So you could easily say that htaccess files predates Apache itself.

Once I discovered what .htaccess files could do towards helping me enumerate and exploit security vulnerabilities even on big shared-hosts I focused all my research into .htaccess files, meaning I was reading the venerable Apache HTTP Source code 24/7! I compiled every released version of the Apache Web Server, ever, even NCSA's, and focused on enumerating the most powerful htaccess directives. Good times! Because my focus was on protocol/file/network vulnerabilites instead of web dev I built up a nice toolbox of htaccess tricks to do unusual things. When I switched over to webdev in 2005 I started using htaccess for websites, not research. I documented most of my favorites and rewrote the htaccess guide for webdevelopers. After some great encouragement on various forums and nets I decided to start a blog to share my work with everyone, AskApache.com was registered, I published my guide, and it was quickly plagiarized and scraped all over the net. Information is freedom, and freedom is information, so this blog has the least restrictive copyright for you. Feel free to modify, copy, republish, sell, or use anything on this site ;)

Posted in Htaccess | Published on January 10, 2009 |87 Comments »

Chmod, Umask, Stat, Fileperms, and File Permissions

Unix file permissions are one of the more difficult subjects to grasp.. Well, ok maybe "grasp" isn't the word.. Master is the right word.. Unix file permissions is a hard topic to fully master, mainly I think because there aren't many instances when a computer user encounters them. I've done a lot of research on it the past couple weeks... and now here's everything I've learned so far.. cuz you guys AskApache Regs Rock!

Posted in Security | Published on November 19, 2008 |8 Comments »

COMPUTER SECURITY TOOLBOX

List of mainly obscure security software geared more for the master pentester. These are mostly for unix, bsd, and mac and many are difficult to install and setup (require custom servers, inside access points, obscure libraries). Only programs that output data are included, so no actual exploits or anything. Most of these output extremely useful albeit extremely technical information.

Posted in Security | Published on September 26, 2008 |3 Comments »

About AskApache

The goal of AskApache.com is simple - To provide free access to knowledge and data with the goal of empowering people.. or more melodramatically: "Power to the People!"

Why the name AskApache? AskApache was chosen to show and pay respect to the contributors of the Apache Web Server. Literally it means to ask Apache when facing a problem, by … Read the rest

Posted in | Published on September 15, 2008 |10 Comments »

Elite Log File Scrolling with Color Syntax

Scrolls the latest log entries for multiple log files to the current screen or to any other monitor or TTY in color using syntax highlighting, making debugging easier and saving a lot of time for multi-monitor workstations.

Posted in Linux | Published on August 9, 2008 |5 Comments »

Upgrading to DreamHost Private Servers

DreamHost PS gives you your own "virtual machine", protecting your CPU and RAM on your physical machine for faster websites. Here's what I like and dislike about DreamHostPS, and some of the issues and solutions for migrating.

Posted in Hosting | Published on May 31, 2008 |14 Comments »

Blocking Bad Bots and Scrapers with .htaccess

Want to block a bad robot or web scraper using .htaccess files? Here are 2 methods that illustrate blocking 436 various user-agents.

Posted in Htaccess | Published on April 8, 2008 |22 Comments »

Renaming Sponsored Links in AdSense

Google AdSense calles their AdSense Ads, "Sponsored Links", while Text-Link-Ads.com recommends "Sponsored By". Of course it is against the Google Adsense TOS to rename your ads, but in general, for non-adsense, what do you like to call your sponsored links?

Posted in SEO | Published on November 13, 2007 |No Comments »

What I think about DreamHost Web Hosting

NOTE: This is a very old post, I do NOT recommend DreamHost for anyone other than spammers. They are not a long-term solution.

Posted in Hosting | Published on November 11, 2007 |2 Comments »

.htpasswd file Generator

.htpasswd is a flat-file used by Apache and other applications to store usernames and password for HTTP authentication. Apache .htpasswd files may contain multiple types of passwords; some may have MD5-encrypted passwords while others in the same file may have passwords encrypted with crypt(3) and/or SHA-1. Usernames are limited to 255 bytes and may not include the character :.… Read the rest

Posted in | Published on October 3, 2007 |No Comments »

Wget Trick to Download from Restrictive Sites

Before
After trick
I am often logged in to my servers via SSH, and I need to download a file like a WordPress plugin. I've noticed many sites now employ a means of blocking robots like wget from accessing their files. Most of the time they use .htaccess to do this. So a permanent workaround has wget mimick a normal browser.

Posted in Linux | Published on September 6, 2007 |9 Comments »

Custom Webmaster Shell Environment

Webmasters often use SSH to remotely admin web sites and servers, learn how to make your shell colorful and powerful using my sample .bash_profile and you can be up and running in 30 seconds!

Posted in Shell Scripting | Published on July 4, 2007 |No Comments »

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