DEV Community: manindar mohan

Nginx Server Security: Nginx Hardening

manindar mohan — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 08:58:06 +0000

Nginx is a lightweight, open-source, robust, high-performance HTTP server and a reverse proxy. It’s the most popular web server, beating Apache and IIS.

While the default configurations are favored by most people, they are not secure enough, and extra tweaks are needed to reinforce the web server.

Here, we will look into some actions you can take to strengthen and improve Nginx server security.

Disable Any Unwanted Modules

It is advised to disable any modules that are not used as this will decrease the risk of potential attacks by limiting operations.

Implement SSL Certificate

The SSL certificate is a digital certificate powered by cryptography that encrypts data traffic between your web server and the web browser. SSL certificate also forces your website to use the secure HTTPS protocol over HTTP, which transmits traffic in plain text.

Exclude Server Headers

Server Headers disclose the Nginx version and it helps the attacker to plan further.

Resource Control

To counter potential DoS attacks on Nginx it’s possible to set buffer size restrictions for all the clients.

Leaving the server in default configuration is not a secure practice to follow and what we neglect as a low risk might become a possible threat in the future.

A more detailed version with implementation is published at : https://beaglesecurity.com/blog/article/nginx-server-security.html

WordPress Security: Vulnerabilities And How To Improve Security

manindar mohan — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 13:33:03 +0000

All websites are not created equally. Any website can experience technical issues but with a WordPress website, you’re also leaving yourself exposed due to its vulnerable nature.

WordPress runs on open source code and has a team of dedicated engineers to identify and fix security issues that occur in the core source code. As soon as a security vulnerability is disclosed, a security patch is immediately pushed.

That’s why managing WordPress and keeping it updated to the latest version is incredibly essential to the overall security of your website.

WordPress Security Vulnerabilities

If you maintain a WordPress-powered website or do consider using WordPress as your CMS, you should be concerned about the possible WordPress security issues. Here, I’ll outline several common WordPress security vulnerabilities:

Unauthorized Logins
Cross-Site Scripting
SQL Injections
File Inclusion Exploits
Denial-of-Service Attacks

What Makes A WordPress Website Vulnerable

Some of the main reasons that make a WordPress website vulnerable include:

Weak passwords
Not frequently updating plugins and themes
Using plugins and themes from untrustworthy sources
Using poor-quality or shared hosting

How To Improve WordPress Website Security

You can keep your WordPress website secure and prevent data breach or loss by following certain security best practices. They are:

Having a strong password policy so that users need to provide longer and more secure passwords
Enabling two-factor authentication
Frequently updating WordPress core, themes and plugins
Implementing proper permissions for web server’s directory
Scheduling vulnerability and malware scans on a regular basis
Keeping a reliable and effective backup plan
Activating brute force protection

A more detailed blog is published at : https://beaglesecurity.com/blog/article/wordpress-security.html

Hardening Server Security By Implementing Security Headers

manindar mohan — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 15:17:10 +0000

Most of the security vulnerabilities can be corrected by implementing specific headers in the server response header. HTTP security headers present yet another tier of security by helping to mitigate intrusions and security vulnerabilities.
We will examine some of them to help you better know their purpose and how to implement them.

What are HTTP security headers?

Whenever a browser requests a page from any web server, the server responds with the content along with HTTP response headers. These HTTP security headers tell the browser how to behave while handling the website content.

Content Security Policy

The Content Security Policy header implements an additional layer of security. This policy helps prevent attacks such as Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and other code injection attacks by limiting content sources that are approved and thus permitting the browser to load them.

X-Frame-Options

The X-Frame-Options HTTP response header is used to indicate if a browser is permitted to execute a page in a “frame”, “iframe” or “object” HTML tag. Sites and applications can use this to dodge clickjacking attacks, by ensuring their content cannot be embedded into other sites.

X-XSS-Protection

X-XSS-Protection header is intended to protect against Cross-Site Scripting attacks.

X-Content-Type-Options

The X-Content-Type-Options header is used to indicate that the MIME types recorded in the Content-Type headers should not be changed. This protects you from MIME type sniffing.

HTTP Strict Transport Security

A Strict Transport Security header (HSTS) enables the application to inform browsers that it should be only accessed using HTTPS instead of HTTP.
If the website or application allows connection through HTTP before redirecting to HTTPS, visitors can communicate with the non-encrypted version of the site before the redirect which creates an opportunity for man-in-the-middle attacks.
Upon the first interaction with a website, the browser won’t be aware of an HSTS Policy for the host, therefore the initial communication is taking place over HTTP.
To resolve this problem, browsers contain a preloaded list of sites that are configured for strict transport security. HSTS is generally set to a “max-age” value that is high enough to keep the website cached in the HSTS account for the entire duration that is specified.

A more detailed version with implementation on different servers with graphical representation is published at : https://beaglesecurity.com/blog/blogs/2020/06/27/Hardening-server-security-by-implementing-security-headers.html

Cyber Security Threats And Best Practices For Remote Workers

manindar mohan — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 13:38:53 +0000

As we are going through unusual and challenging times, our daily habit has been affected in all sorts of ways. For those who are working from home, this is indeed a very difficult time. We are more open to cyber attacks due to the little to no cyber security we have in place while working from home.

Hackers are desperately trying to exploit the opportunity and up to some extent, it’s working. It’s mainly because many organizations and business tasks have gone from an internal network to the open internet without much preparation. This has exposed them to more potential threats.

Some of the common attacks are listed below.

Email-Phishing
SMS-Phishing
Mobile Malware
Malicious Software
Ransomware Attacks

Cyber Security Best Practices For Remote Workers

In this rising time of cyber attacks, taking preventive action against these interventions is a necessity.

Use antivirus and antispyware software on every computer used in your business and make sure they are frequently updated.
Limit physical access to your computers and network components.
Regularly change passwords and ensure that they’re not easy to predict

more detailed version published at https://beaglesecurity.com/blog/blogs/2020/04/13/Cyber-Security-Threats-and-Best-Practices-for-Remote-Workers.html