Category: Domain Related

June 7, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

No one needs to hear how Malware has become such more sophisticated and far-reaching nowadays, as the topics been beaten to death and everyone knows that cyber security experts are hard pressed to keep pace with them. Well, here we go again with one of the more menacing ones to come out of the void in more recent years. That’s Siloscape, named that way because this is malware that’s primary aim is to escape the container, and what better way than up and out. To get technical, Siloscape is a heavily obfuscated malware built to open a backdoor into poorly configured Kubernetes clusters and then run malicious containers to go along with other sneaky and up-to-no-good activities. If an entire cluster is compromised the attacker gets served sensitive information like credentials, confidential files, or even entire databases hosted in the cluster. Experts are semi-jokingly comparing this to the novel coronavirus, as this malware bug is pretty darn novel in itself as there’s really nothing been like it before and that’s why it’s generating fanfare. Unlikely to be as calamitous in the big picture as this darn pandemic though, which is a good thing. All of this stuff tends to be fascinating enough for those of us here like it would be for any Canadian web hosting provider. Nature of the business and all, and while we have a formative understanding of web security practices there’s no one here who’d be able to pull up the drawbridge in any situation like this. So let’s have a look at his Siloscape malware and lay out what you might need to know if you’re your own cyber security expert. Cluster Buster For anyone who might not know, the reason this is as serious as it is is because Kubernetes is one of the most popular open-source applications around, and for good reason. Containers have been wonderful and that’s why it’s unfortunate Siloscape is engineered to do what it does. So many organizations moving into the club are using Kubernetes clusters as their development and testing environments, and the threat of software supply chain attacks has to be seen as a huge threat. Compromising...

May 31, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Managing something usually has the context of getting greater productivity out of whatever it is. So if it’s always a plus, does that apply to managed web hosting the same way? The appeal is easy to see, and if you don’t know what managed hosting is it’s where the web hosting provider manages the system for you. As you’d expect, that means additional cost for the client but many businesses and ventures will come to see that as money well spent. This is particularly true if time and manpower aren’t resources you have in abundance and you need to focus more on content rather than workings of the site. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other quality Canadian web hosting provider in that what we do makes us fairly knowledgeable on matter like this one. While we think managed web hosting is great for some people, we also feel that with a little bit of self-initiative paired with ease of use offered by cPanel standard with our web hosting packages that you can be fairly productive on your own. That likely won’t be true for those operating larger e-commerce websites but for anyone that’s – for example – selling their pottery online or something similar you’d be surprised how proactive you can be. So that’s what we’re going to do with our entry this week, look at what’s good about managed web hosting and also looking at what’s not so good about it. Pros of Managed Hosting Being successful and / or profitable with website can take up a lot of time and effort, and primarily for content updates, design tweaks, and digital marketing activity. When you add ongoing technical maintenance on top of that, it can be overwhelming for some and especially if you’re the type who’s a webmaster in title while not being particularly web savvy in the first place. Everyone needs to start somewhere though. The advantage of managed hosting is how it lets you focus on the specifics of your business without additional worries of any sort related to site performance or security. E-commerce merchants will always need speedy loading times but often won’t have the...

May 24, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

We’ve been pretty emphatic with promoting virtual private servers here over the years, and nothing has changed with how they’re a much better choice for websites that need more bandwidth and performance resources at their disposal. That’s not going to be the scenario for the vast majority of people having their websites hosted, and every one of those guys and gals will be just fine paying as little as possible for web hosting by going with a shared hosting plan. It’s especially the best choice for anyone whose site is simply a blog. One of the things that makes us a top Canadian web hosting provider is the way we are able to pivot and turn with industry trends, and that’s what we’ll be doing with one of the more promising ones these days. VPS continue to be a good option, but now VDS servers are the even better choice for a lot of people who made the move to VPS a while ago. VPS is virtual private server while VDS is virtual dedicated server. So what’s the difference and what makes VDS better for some? That’s what we’ll look at with this week’s entry. Bare Metal Alternative for Bigger Boys Most people that have their website as a primary resource for e-commerce interests are going to operating it on behalf on some business. Not surprising that bigger businesses will have bigger websites and ones that have plenty of size and dynamic content components as compared to what the average website on shared hosting is going to have. These people needed powerful servers with predictable performance and for many years that meant going with a bare metal server. But now it’s changed to be that a VDS server is a better option when dedicated resources are needed. Previously you would probably rent a bare metal server and have it collocated it in a data center. The problem here is that the server is not going to scalable, and the bare metal servers have always tended to be expensive to maintain. So Why VDS? Change became possible when hypervisor technologies started making it so that multiple virtual machines could be run...

May 17, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The past 3 years or so in the world of cybersecurity have really made clear that hackers have expanded their reach and capability in a big way over that time, and it’s fair to say that cyber security interests have struggled to keep pace in protecting digital interests from being hacked into. The single individual doesn’t have as much to worry about when it comes to being hacked as a business or large enterprise does, but that doesn’t mean that they should be unconcerned. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other good Canadian web hosting provider in that making sure our servers are as secure as possible, but when also know that we’ve got it pretty good in comparison to some others who have way, way more in the way of data that needs to be protected. Researchers have been stepping up their efforts to keep hackers more in check, and that’s a very good thing. Specifically what’s happened recently is they’ve found a way to use chaos to help create digital fingerprints for electronic devices that may be so thoroughly unique that even the most sophisticated hackers can’t get past them. And that’s based on just the sheer volume of possible combinations that will be possible meaning it would take an incomprehensibly long time to go through and try every one of them. How long? Well, we’ll get to that as we move further into discussing this very interesting development in web security. That Long! It’s believed that these Chaos fingerprints ahave so many layers of unique patterning to them that it would take longer than the lifetime of the universe to test for every possible combination available. Behind all of this is an emerging technology called physically unclonable functions – PUFs - which are built into computer chips. We’re not quite there yet, but it’s possible that these new PUFs could possibly be used to create super-secure ID cards and reliably track goods in supply chains and as part of authentication applications. Ones where it is vital to know the individual you’re communicating or sharing information with is legit. The recent SolarWinds hack on the US Gov’t has...

May 10, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s been a while since we had an entry talking about the much-buzzed about topic of cryptocurrency, and it’s not like we’ll never have some new fold on the page with the stuff given how much uncertainty there still is about whether cryptocurrencies are ever going to assume the central role in globally unregulated currency that some people still adamantly insist they will. Given how much actual crypto mining is going on out there and the lengths people are going to in order to get in on the action suggests there’s still plenty of belief out there. Whether or not cryptocurrencies will be a legit option for paying for SaaS on PaaS products is something that might be of interest to a Canadian web hosting provider, and that definitely applies to us here at 4GoodHosting. Some say the real questions if Bitcoin are any cryptocurrency can ever be generated to the type of volume that would be needed to make it a legitimately exchanged currency. But like was said, the effort is definitely there to ‘obtain’ whatever there is to get out there, and the fact that there’s a criminal element in crypto mining furthers that fact even more. A tool is always needed, and for these crypto miner crooks their implement of-choice is crypto-jacking malware. It’s like hijacking but it’s not planes being intercepted, it’s cryptocurrency. But the good news is that tech giants are fighting back and making it so that it’s much more difficult to hijack someone’s else cryptocurrency who’s been mining it legitimately. Super Defender To get right down to it, what Microsoft is doing is integrating Intel Threat Detection Technology into Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and this revamped security product will help protect businesses from crypto-jacking malware. Up until now these crypto miners use only a small fraction of power depending on the device, so they often don’t end up on the radar of security teams. It’s only more recently that larger sums have been lost to crypto jackers who’ve found ways to do what they do much more effectively and greater reach that it’s become more of a priority for everyone, even though crypto...

May 3, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s almost a certainty that in say five to 10 years from now there’s going to be all sorts of conclusions identified about how the COVID years of ’20 and ’21 let to widespread fundamental changes to the lives of humans. Some of that will be good, some of that will be not so good. Some of them are already very apparent, like the explosion in popularity for online shopping. Others can’t be seen as easily and it takes data analysts and the like to dig up those realities and share them with the rest of us. Which is fine. And leads us to the question – have you noticed your mobile device in your hands and ‘at work’ a whole lot more often since around about a year ago? For some people that may have been the reality long before early 2020, but as a collective whole it would seem that COVID-19 has somewhat subtly made our smartphones a whole lot more integral to our day to day. Here at 4GoodHosting, we imagine we’re like any good Canadian web hosting provider in that we’ve seen more interest in people having mobile-friendly websites. So what’s behind all of this, and how is that a global pandemic is making mobile even more prominent in the digital lives of earth’s inhabitants? App usage, purchasing, and time spent on apps have all gone up considerably as the world relied even more on mobile web access to weather the storm. In response to this more and more venture capital has gone into mobile web technology development, and industries that really saw a lot of it were financial services, transportation, commerce, and shopping. And that’s lead to what’s being seen now - 26% of total global VC funding is going into mobile-related ventures and $73 billion was directed into mobile just last year. Attention and Engagement There are a lot of different factors that are leading people to be approaching more and more tasks with their handheld device rather than a notebook or desktop. Mobile is increasingly the hub, both at home and at work and it’s a new reality driving considerable changes in how...

April 26, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

As promised, with this week’s blog entry we’re continuing with the discussion of what the average person can easily and reliably do to improve the security of their website when managing it through cPanel, which is of course what you’ll be doing if your site is hosted by us. Widespread adoption speaks volumes about the quality and practicality of software, and with that understood it’s not surprising to see that you’d have the same cPanel to work with if you were with pretty much every other good Canadian web hosting provider too. It continues to be a wild and crazy time in the world as the global pandemic keeps reinventing itself, but fortunately the viruses that infect digitally aren’t nearly as readily transmissible as the physiological one that is turning the whole world upside down right now. So if you’re the Average Joe webmaster ensuring your website is serving whatever interest you have in mind for it then maybe that’s some good news mixed into a whole lot of not-so-good nowadays. Anyways, let’s get to continuing our list shall we, and here’s to hoping you’re all keeping safe. Set up Mod Security Experts are always eager to share warnings about Web Application Security. The aim is usually to reach the web application server to control you. It’s for this reason that a Web Application Firewall (WAF) can enhance cPanel security. Mod Security gets the nod here as the best choice – it’s reputable and open source. It defends reliably against most external attacks - SQL Injection, Webshell / Backdoor Detection, iFrame attacks, Botnet Attack Detection, or HTTP Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks.Configuration is simple, and is found in the Security Centre of Easy Apache configuration.It is simple to configure Mod Security. You will get it under the Security Center of Easy Apache configuration. With it you will also have the option to set additional measures to improve the security of your cPanel server. Scan with RootKit Hunter RootKit Hunter gets extremely high marks from cPanel experts. It’s among the best UNIX based tools for scanning possible local exploits including rootkits or backdoors. It offers the option of manual or automatic...

April 19, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

5G isn’t commonplace yet, but it’s not too far off from becoming that and we’re already starting to get sample tastes of what it’s capable of. And you likely know someone who already has a 5G smartphone and they’ve probably been all too keen to tell you how it’s so much superior. No doubt they are, but what’s really the big story around 5G is what it’s poised to make specific technologies – and apps among them – capable of. Then when the superior processing capabilities of edge computing are added to the mix we really start ‘cooking with gas’, as the expression goes. A lot of people are probably currently just as satisfied as can be with apps as it is. Unless you’re a really digitally discerning person you are probably quite fine with what your apps are able to do for you now. If we could fast forward 5 years, however, you’d probably be looking back at your current apps and their capabilities and describing them as totally underwhelming. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any good Canadian web hosting service provider in that we can relate to all of this a little more readily than most, and that’s only because the nature of our work puts all of this a lot more on the radar. So if Edge Computing and 5G are poised to be the perfect dynamic duo that’s going to power web applications to new heights, it makes sense that we dig a lot deeper into this interesting topic. The Basics 5G promises the ultra low latency and high capacity required to make data-intensive applications work more effectively. That equation starts with blazing fast speeds – 5G enables data travelling from a device to a cell tower and back in just 3 milliseconds. 4G needs 12-15 milliseconds to do that. This is huge for advanced applications. Autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars) are one of the best examples of how 5G’s speed and low latency is opening us up to a whole new world of very life- and society improving technologies. Medical professionals using 5G to get and provide instant diagnoses of patients is another potentially huge development...

April 12, 2021

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

5G isn’t commonplace yet, but it’s not too far off from becoming that and we’re already starting to get sample tastes of what it’s capable of. And you likely know someone who already has a 5G smartphone and they’ve probably been all too keen to tell you how it’s so much superior. No doubt they are, but what’s really the big story around 5G is what it’s poised to make specific technologies – and apps among them – capable of. Then when the superior processing capabilities of edge computing are added to the mix we really start ‘cooking with gas’, as the expression goes. A lot of people are probably currently just as satisfied as can be with apps as it is. Unless you’re a really digitally discerning person you are probably quite fine with what your apps are able to do for you now. If we could fast forward 5 years, however, you’d probably be looking back at your current apps and their capabilities and describing them as totally underwhelming. Here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any good Canadian web hosting service provider in that we can relate to all of this a little more readily than most, and that’s only because the nature of our work puts all of this a lot more on the radar. So if Edge Computing and 5G are poised to be the perfect dynamic duo that’s going to power web applications to new heights, it makes sense that we dig a lot deeper into this interesting topic. The Basics 5G promises the ultra low latency and high capacity required to make data-intensive applications work more effectively. That equation starts with blazing fast speeds – 5G enables data traveling from a device to a cell tower and back in just 3 milliseconds. 4G needs 12-15 milliseconds to do that. This is huge for advanced applications. Autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars) are one of the best examples of how 5G’s speed and low latency is opening us up to a whole new world of very life- and society improving technologies. Medical professionals using 5G to get and provide instant diagnoses of patients is another potentially huge development...