AdamH.us

Summary: A web host had a crappy server configuration that allowed people on the same box to read each others’ configuration files, and some members of the “security” press have tried to turn this into a “WordPress vulnerability” story.

WordPress, like all other web applications, must store database connection info in clear text. Encrypting credentials doesn’t matter because the keys have to be stored where the web server can read them in order to decrypt the data. If a malicious user has access to the file system — like they appeared to have in this case — it is trivial to obtain the keys and decrypt the information. When you leave the keys to the door in the lock, does it help to lock the door?

WordPress › Blog » Secure File Permissions Matter.

I saw this today and just had to laugh… I mean, how dumb can people be? Wait. No need to answer that. Einstein said it well enough — human stupidity is infinite. Why do we have Darwin awards?

Anyway,  I’m posting this up here just to clear up — TheScripters web hosting does not have this problem. It would seem to have been limited to Network Solutions. No need to worry. If you have a hosting account with us, all files are private.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

The local.thescripters.net server is now up and running! It’s taken some time because of some of my own configuration blunders, but it’s up. Most everything appears to be operational. If you find otherwise, let me know, either here or by email: contact@thescripters.com.

My new workstation is also now running. Has a couple issues with XP that need to be worked out. I do have Linux installed as a third OS, so I have two 64-bit systems with one 32-bit system.

Here’s what I’ve got:

• Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 3)
• Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
• Slackware64 13.0 (64-bit)

The triple-boot was working perfectly until I messed with folder ownership on the XP partition… So I’ll be fixing that this week, as well.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

Over the next couple of days, The Scripters local servers (where client websites are posted for testing) is going to be up and down as I am changing computers.  The way it is right now is that my personal computer is also the server. That is going to change by the end of next week. I have finally built my new machine enough to start running it. and so the server will become more of "pure server" and will only be running one operating system. Right now it semi-triple-boots. "Semi" because I don’t actually go into the third OS very often.

The server will be running Slackware Linux 13.0 with Apache 2, MySQL 5, and PHP 5. The system is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 1 GB RAM. It has one 80 GB HDD and one 160 GB HDD.

My new system is an AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 GHz. I’ll put in the new 320 GB SATA HDD today and then install Windows XP on there. I’ll also be moving the video capture card to the new one.

Point is, there are a few changes coming and servers are going to be a little back and forth for a few days while I get everything set up.

The main website (www.thescripters.com) will remain unaffected, but local.thescripters.net will be offline off and on. I will try to upload client websites to clients.thescripters.com before anything goes down so that are available.

Side note: Congratulations to me. AdamH.us has its 100th post and 100th tag now!

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!