Ben joined Virya Technologies back in 2009 as a freelance contractor, providing support to our IT clients around Suffolk and Essex.  He joined our team on a full-time basis in February 2012 and leads up the IT Support team.  Ben has also been key in moving our business processes towards a completely Open Source setup, and is a frequent contributor to several open source projects.

As you are probably aware by now, we were the subject of a distributed denial of service attack which commenced on the evening of Monday, 12th December 2012, targeted against the IP of our server. This article is hopefully an explanation of exactly what happened, a timeline of events, and what we are doing to prevent it happening again. We also hope it answers some questions you might have about the process we went through to recover the sites.

Our company server went down at midnight, we were looking for emergency out of hours support and Virya Technologies was there to help when no one else was answering.  Within 10 minutes an engineer was on the phone sorting it out.

We contacted Virya Technologies after being given 48 hours notice to resolve a spam issue on one of our servers.

We were approached by a company who had received an email from an individual suggesting that several areas of their ASP e-commerce website and Windows Server were vulnerable to attack, and provided details of how information from their database could be retreived by following certain processes.

How do you know if your Joomla! website is being run effectively?  Have you had a Joomla! site created but not sure whether the security is up to scratch?  This article aims to give some tips to check against your website, which are drawn from standard security and 'best practice' guidelines.  If you have any other points you think we should add, please leave a comment!

 

The Internet is awash with speculation following allegations that the IPSEC cryptographic stack in OpenBSD was furnished with a backdoor at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The allegations were made by Gregory Perry in an e-mail to one of the founders of NetBSD - Theo De Raadt – and were published on the BSD mailing lists so that a code audit can be undertaken by those with an interest in doing so.

If such a backdoor does exist, it could allow the FBI (and conceviably others) to decrypt communications between servers, whether those communications take place over a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or over a Secure Shell Connection (SSH).

This whitepaper will examine the precedents for this allegation as well as the potential impact that such a revelation could have on businesses around the world.

Homogenous -

1.	composed of similar or identical parts or elements
2.	of uniform nature

 

Management love homogeneous networks; they reduce the amount of training needed, the number of IT Technicians to offer support and, of course, offer an opportunity to obtain bulk discount through volume licensing.

But in pursuing lower capital and maintenance costs, are these same managers opening their networks to attack?

 

Why ESET?

When it comes to protecting home or office computers, a growing number of users are choosing ESET antivirus software. Here's why:

It's effective

ESET solutions are the most effective proactive protection you can buy to combat today's huge volumes of web and email-borne threats. ESET's award-winning ThreatSense® technology has multiple layers of threat detection to deliver the most effective protection possible against new attacks with the fewest false positives (false alarms).

• ESET has the most VB100 awards (62) for its ability to detect "In-the-Wild" viruses. In fact ESET has not missed an In-the-Wild virus in over 10 years
• ESET is a consistent top-performer in AV-Comparatives Proactive Detection tests
• ESET was named "Best Antivirus Product" for 2006 and 2007 and won "Best Overall Performance" by AV-Comparatives, an independent testing organization.

It's fast

ESET antivirus software is so fast you won't even know it's there. It uses only 44-48MBs of memory, so if you're replacing existing antivirus protection, you may find some applications run faster.

It's easy to use

From its compact and intuitive user interface to its minimal use of alerts, you'll be up and running in minutes.

It has free and comprehensive customer support

ESET provides an online user manual and FAQs along with a lively user forum, as well as email and telephone customer support.

Free 30-day trial

A free 30-day trial download is available by contacting us, so you can try it yourself with no obligation.

ESET offers two products for home and office use: ESET NOD32 Antivirus and ESET Smart Security. Both Business Editions come with server installation, Remote Administration and Mirror capability.

ESET NOD32 Antivirus

ESET NOD32 Antivirus proactively detects and eliminates more viruses, trojans, worms, adware, spyware, phishing, rootkits and other Internet threats than any program available. It's the ideal antivirus for Windows XP, and also runs smoothly on Windows legacy systems, MS-DOS, file servers, mail servers, and more.

ESET Smart Security

ESET Smart Security is the most comprehensive defense against web-based threats. It offers the same anti-malware protection as ESET NOD32 Antivirus along with a personal firewall and antispam, so you can proactively filter content and ensure effective, customised protection.

ESET Mobile Antivirus for Smartphones

Mobile devices like Smartphones and PocketPCs are exploding in numbers. Malware that targets them is bound to follow. Detecting and disabling these emerging threats requires sophistication beyond signature-based antivirus. ESET's heuristics engine is the best protection for individuals and businesses that depend on mobile communication. Fast and thorough scanning keeps your files free of malware and our SMS spam filter keeps your text message folder uncluttered.

As servers are vulnerable to blended threats as well, ESET offers a wide and growing range of server security solutions for:

• Mail servers
• File servers
• Gateway devices
• Dell storage servers

Additionally, ESET continues to make products available for customers using legacy workstations and MS-DOS.

A home network is fantastically versatile resource, you can share media and files between PC's, you can even indulge in some home gaming but it does come at a cost. If you can access every computer in your home, there's a potential that someone else could too. This article examines the steps that you should take in order to maintain the health and security of your home network.