JK’s Journal

Website CMS Quandary

Published on Jan 16, 2010 at 3:40

I’ve been considering redesigning PlanetJK for at least a year now. I’ve been truly considering it for about 3 months. One of the main problems I run into is Content vs. Aesthetics. I could justifiably ramble on for a long time about that topic alone, but realistically speaking I just want to focus on telling what I’m trying to do and go from there.

I’m immensely proud of the fact that the current design exists because of me manually coding PHP, CSS, and XHTML 1.1 Transitional files. I have my own homegrown template system that allows me to change the code on one include file and affect the entire site, whether it be menu, header, footer, content, or overall layout. Alas, the time to maintain such a setup eroded years ago, and I’ve been limping along ever since. It’s time to focus on content.

I really like WordPress as a blogging platform- I’ve been using it for years, and the backend is easily maintainable using DreamHost’s One-Click options. But now that I’m trying to incorporate WordPress as the sole website publisher/ controller/ editor/ etc, I find myself wanting assurances that it will be stable, secure, and work solidly for what I need.

Unfortunately, as an IT Security guy, I also know that WordPress has the potential to be more vulnerable than other CMS’. And yes, I know that virtually EVERYTHING is rife with vulnerabilities: the debate is fierce and will thrive for some time. At the same time, Zope and Plone have been relatively safe from exploits- yet, they’re much tougher to customize the way I want.

In the end, getting things the way I want is my first priority, so for now I’m strongly leaning toward WordPress. A very close second is being safe from exploits. Wish me luck in finding the appropriate level of compromise.

Summary of PlanetJK exploit attempts

Published on Jan 9, 2010 at 8:16

Jan 31, 2010: Made status updates below.

In this post I’m taking rough notes of what appear to be attempted exploits against planetjk.com. I’m noting these partially for my benefit, so I can keep a log of things to potentially upgrade/mitigate.

I have a CSV file of traffic (currently logging the last 20 months) for cumulative analysis, but I couldn’t get Open Office to quickly trim out my home and work IP’s so right now I’m just eyeballing the data.

For a bit of a visual, here’s the visitor traffic broken down by country, courtesy of Mint:

Someone with an IP in Sweden is trying to login to my Tasks and Gallery2 (photo albums). A lot.
My installation of Mint needs to be updated //Done
I’m seeing a moderate amount of trolling for phpMyAdmin directories
In Mid-December, I see a lot of HTTP 500’s returned from disparate IP’s trying to get to this blog. Perhaps I was doing maintenance?
An obvious zombie host tried exploiting some PHP code in the FAQ to surreptitiously upload a PDF (presumably loaded with more exploits). Oh wow: I just scrolled up and saw 12 more instances of the same thing, to different target paths, from the same source. That’s getting reported. //Done: sent an e-mail to the Abuse coordinator at Americanis
A machine in Brazil tried to route the Photo Albums through a known brute force tool previously hosted online (I say previously because the domain name has since been suspended). I’m glad that DreamHost has one-click installs which allow me to upgrade ASAP. Now that I think about it more, I host photo albums and blogs for a few friends that don’t really use them anymore. It might be time to remove them. //Done: sent e-mails to friends

Okay, that’s enough for this morning- I have some abuse POC’s to contact. The notes above represent a reverse chronological eyeballing of traffic from Dec 2009 through now.

The biggest “problem” I have is that search bots don’t have memory loss. I still get trolled for directory structure that I had in place in 2001- I should really look into modifying robots.txt or creating proper sitemaps so they know where to go. It’s not really a security issue but it creates a ton of noise in the logs.

The biggest note to self is that I REALLY need to make a habit out of checking logs more often. Getting pwn3d on your personal domain is a bad thing for an IT security guy.

By JK | Posted in Home Svelte Home, Website News, xTreme G33k | Comments (0)

Merry Christma-Festi-Kwanz-akah!

Published on Dec 25, 2009 at 9:14

In our house we proudly celebrate Christmakah today: the menorah and the Christmas tree light up the living room, and dreidel ornaments adorn the tree.

We’re in South Carolina for the Holidays, and I’m waiting for everyone else to wake up so we can open presents, but I wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays!

By JK | Posted in Globetrotting, Life, Liberty, Pursuit | Comments (2)

Viva la Veterans

Published on Nov 11, 2009 at 9:24

I’m proud of my 4 years of service in the Navy, and part of me will always wonder what life would have been like if the service was something I felt compelled to make a career out of. Both my Mom and Dad were in the Army, and my grandfather tells good stories of driving around Italy in a jeep on patrols during his Army service.

Anyway… This isn’t the place for reminiscing. I simply wanted to toss up a post and include some informational links about the history of Veteran’s Day, an awesome Veteran’s flickr pool, and the President’s proclamation that he will read at the ceremony today.

In closing, courtesy of the The US Army’s flickr: