Tag Archives: users

5 Website Security Issues You Should Be Aware Of?

Technology has become more advanced, and with it, hack attacks in the online world are increasing at an alarming rate.

Hackers use known vulnerabilities in third-party softwares to target your website and web server, and use it for their advantage.

The effect of this maybe just defacing of your website, stealing your confidential client data, or even worse, use your server resources to perform illegal activities.

There are some simple tips you can leverage to strengthen your website software and sleep with peace of mind.

  1. XSS or Cross Site Scripting
  2. XSS occurs when a hacker embeds scripting code into a web form or url, and run malicious code to change your web visitor’s experience and steal passwords or other data.

    XSS can also be persistent nature, where an attacker can manipulate a specific web page and show it as a login screen to users. The recent XSS comment hack on WordPress 4.2 is an example of such permanent loophole.

  3. SQL Injection
  4. SQL injection occurs when a hacker uses a web form field or URL parameter to manipulate your database. Almost all web platforms have a database and generally open source CMS platforms maintain dynamic aspects of the website in database.

  5. DoS or Denial of Service Attack
  6. Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDos) attacks are by far the most notorious kinds of attacks.

    That is because, any level of hacker with a small investment can bombard a victim website, with millions of requests, and make them look like they are legit users.

    This eventually crashes the web server, and makes the site offline, requiring manual intervention to bring it back online.

  7. Weak Passwords
  8. We should all use complex passwords, because the weakest link is all it takes to break the chain. It is imperative to use strong passwords for admin areas, but equally important for all users to protect the security of their accounts.

    One account compromised can lead to another and that could lead to admin account hacked. It is recommended to have passwords with minimum 8 letters, digits and special characters to avoid quick password guesses.

  9. Brute-force Attack
  10. These attacks are trial-n-error methods to guess your username and password. Weak passwords are prone to getting hacked easily.

    Methods like temporary blocking of IP and accounts, and multi-factor authentication, help mitigating such attacks.

  11. Code Injection
  12. Websites with file upload capability, or sites missing proper client and server side form validation, can be dangerous.

    The risk is that any file uploaded, could contain a script which can be leveraged as root-kit ie. administrator access to your website.

    Lack of form validation on simple form fields could lead to malicious code being inserted into the database, and could cause undesirable results in your website.

  13. Unencrypted Protocol
  14. An unencrypted channel allows man-in-middle attack to steal information from your users.

    It preferred to use security certificate SSL, whenever passing personal information between the website and web server or database.

  15. Debug Mode on Production Server
  16. Some developers may accidentally enable debug mode on the live production server, which dumps extensive error logs to the browser.

    Thus a hacker can obtain valuable information about the softwares used by the webserver and target his attack much better. Its crucial to hide as much internal information about server to minimize and delay the attacks.

  17. Old Software Versions
  18. It may seem obvious, but ensuring you keep all software up to date is vital in keeping your site secure. This applies to both the server operating system and any software you may be running on your website such as a CMS or forum.

    When website security holes are found in software, hackers are quick to abuse them.

  19. No Backup Plan
  20. No matter how much vigilant you are, attackers can find new loopholes to doom your website. So besides prevention, you should also have a backup-restore plan.

    Just in case your site is compromised, you should have a team which can quickly restore the last known backup, and avoid reputation and sales loss.

    Coversine provides a simple affordable solution to all these problems. Your own security professional who will maintain your site’s uptime, performance and security, all-in-one for as low as $10 per month.

    The subscription takes care of performance checks, and regular updates to softwares and apps as well.

What is Social2Search, and how it differs from other adware

What is Social2Search, and how it differs from other adware

Adware development is a very promising sector for hackers and other Internet scams. In recent years, the number of PC users is growing rapidly and so many people are working directly on the Internet, looking through hundreds of pages every day and visiting hundreds of websites. And if earlier from viruses and adware suffered mostly inexperienced users, but now they were joined by people that are working on the Internet. You have to agree, it’s pretty easy to miss the download of a file or accidentally click on a confirmation, if you are flipping websites uninteresting to you or answer the recurring questions all day. Every day the world becomes more and more PC users, and adware is becoming more efficient and more profitable. It infects computers, and starts to show ads in browsers until you delete it. But not every user is able to do it, and sometimes it takes several days or even weeks before the program is finally removed from the computer. During this time, the owner of the infected computer manages go to malicious links few dozens of times, which helps fraudsters to create traffic to third-grade websites, and bring them to the top of issuance. At the same time, adware manages to greatly clog the computer, and let a lot of other viruses to enter the system.

Those who are often faced with clogged computers, or those who have already been victims of viruses or adware, probably know such names as DNS Unlocker, Wajam, Albireo or Provider. These adware samples were the most intrusive, active and difficult to remove until recent time. Few months ago, the new program called Social2Search had appeared in the Web. It quickly settled on this, “market”, and is now ahead of all other competitors by all odds.

This program is so dangerous not because of its features, but because of its well-written description and user-friendly interface. These two factors work to lull the user’s vigilance, and convince him that Social2Search it a good program. According to the description, Social2Search is a special tool that interacts with such well-known social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The purpose of this interaction is to obtain information about the visits of your friends to various websites, and their “likes”, and show you this information. Those who install the program are not concerned that such actions aren’t suitable for everyone. In addition, the developers claim that Social2Search may adversely affect your computer, resisting the actions of other programs (obviously, anti-viruses), and that it is very difficult to remove.

Despite this, users are in a hurry to set Social2Search and to use its non-existent functions. For reference, any social network in the first place shows likes of your friends, and only then – all the rest. So, Social2Search deceit entices the user to install, does not perform the claimed function, prevents the user to use the Internet, and displays tons of ads on each page, and each new tab. The only way to stop this outrage is to remove Social2Search from your computer.

How to remove Social2Search

As I said earlier, Social2Search isn’t very tricky as a program. You can use the standard removal techniques to get rid of it. But, if the program had functioned on your PC for more than a day – you may face some difficulties. Anyway, there’s two ways to uninstall Social2Search: you can do it manually, or with help of AV software. Both ways are completely safe, and were tested many times with thousands of users, but there is one major difference: manual removal is one-off, and the protection of antivirus will last for a long time. So, it’s up to your decision. If you want to protect your PC from all kinds of adware and viruses for years – you should purchase the reputable anti-viral tool. We advise you to use Spyhunter, because it’s one of the most effective and low-price tools. It also has other impressive features, like 24/7 tech-support, wide and daily updated database, plain and friendly interface, low CPU usage. But, if you just want to remove Social2Search quickly and forget about all viruses and removal programs – just visit our main website and follow the instructions.

What is Social2Search, and how it differs from other adware

What is Social2Search, and how it differs from other adware

Adware development is a very promising sector for hackers and other Internet scams. In recent years, the number of PC users is growing rapidly and so many people are working directly on the Internet, looking through hundreds of pages every day and visiting hundreds of websites. And if earlier from viruses and adware suffered mostly inexperienced users, but now they were joined by people that are working on the Internet. You have to agree, it’s pretty easy to miss the download of a file or accidentally click on a confirmation, if you are flipping websites uninteresting to you or answer the recurring questions all day. Every day the world becomes more and more PC users, and adware is becoming more efficient and more profitable. It infects computers, and starts to show ads in browsers until you delete it. But not every user is able to do it, and sometimes it takes several days or even weeks before the program is finally removed from the computer. During this time, the owner of the infected computer manages go to malicious links few dozens of times, which helps fraudsters to create traffic to third-grade websites, and bring them to the top of issuance. At the same time, adware manages to greatly clog the computer, and let a lot of other viruses to enter the system.

Those who are often faced with clogged computers, or those who have already been victims of viruses or adware, probably know such names as DNS Unlocker, Wajam, Albireo or Provider. These adware samples were the most intrusive, active and difficult to remove until recent time. Few months ago, the new program called Social2Search had appeared in the Web. It quickly settled on this, “market”, and is now ahead of all other competitors by all odds.

This program is so dangerous not because of its features, but because of its well-written description and user-friendly interface. These two factors work to lull the user’s vigilance, and convince him that Social2Search it a good program. According to the description, Social2Search is a special tool that interacts with such well-known social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The purpose of this interaction is to obtain information about the visits of your friends to various websites, and their “likes”, and show you this information. Those who install the program are not concerned that such actions aren’t suitable for everyone. In addition, the developers claim that Social2Search may adversely affect your computer, resisting the actions of other programs (obviously, anti-viruses), and that it is very difficult to remove.

Despite this, users are in a hurry to set Social2Search and to use its non-existent functions. For reference, any social network in the first place shows likes of your friends, and only then – all the rest. So, Social2Search deceit entices the user to install, does not perform the claimed function, prevents the user to use the Internet, and displays tons of ads on each page, and each new tab. The only way to stop this outrage is to remove Social2Search from your computer.

How to remove Social2Search

As I said earlier, Social2Search isn’t very tricky as a program. You can use the standard removal techniques to get rid of it. But, if the program had functioned on your PC for more than a day – you may face some difficulties. Anyway, there’s two ways to uninstall Social2Search: you can do it manually, or with help of AV software. Both ways are completely safe, and were tested many times with thousands of users, but there is one major difference: manual removal is one-off, and the protection of antivirus will last for a long time. So, it’s up to your decision. If you want to protect your PC from all kinds of adware and viruses for years – you should purchase the reputable anti-viral tool. We advise you to use Spyhunter, because it’s one of the most effective and low-price tools. It also has other impressive features, like 24/7 tech-support, wide and daily updated database, plain and friendly interface, low CPU usage. But, if you just want to remove Social2Search quickly and forget about all viruses and removal programs – just visit our main website and follow the instructions.