There There is a critical vulnerability has been identified within the Apache Log4J framework which is used by millions of devices running online services. It is a Java-based logging framework part of the Apache Logging Services, a project of the Apache Software Foundation.

What are the implications of the Log4J vulnerability?

The bug in the Apache Log4j module will allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on any system that uses Log4j to write logs.

How bad is this?

This is a very critical bug that should not be ignored until it is patched. The bug is easily exploitable by someone with limited knowledge of the system.

The The year 2021 is a big year for Cyber Security and it will not get any better. The entire perspective of work and other life have changed and we have to change the way we tackle cyber security, otherwise we will either be left behind or become a victim of Cyber attack. There are big misconceptions about cyber attacks and unfortunately the truth is, unless one goes through an attack or has a deep understanding of the implications, they will not see the full effect of it.

Here are 15 points I have put together which, I think an organisation or an individual can do to prevent such attacks.

There There have been a lot of changes around the world in 2020 with the pandemic, and walking into the year 2021 will not change a lot in terms of the new working style. A lot of industries have suffered a great deal, and they have learnt alternative ways to adapt and do their businesses.

Only a small percentage of companies took advantage of remote working and implemented such a solution before the pandemic compared to the current remote working proportion. Companies and government departments were on the fence about remote working and did not implement such solutions, especially on a large scale until their hands were tied to implement it in a short span of time. This is where the quick deployment of technology was vigorously tested to deploy a working environment for the people while maintaining the same level of collaboration and the effectiveness from a centralised office.

There There are a few settings which needs to be checked while configuring Azure CDN. The one which usually gets overlooked is the HTTP to HTTPS redirect. While we deploy the CDN to be accessed via HTTPS, it does not automatically work when the HTTP protocol is used to access. When this happens, it usually displays the following message with the error “The account being accessed does not support http."

This can be achieved using the Endpoint Rules engine to redirect the requests from HTTP to HTTPS.

On On my previous post, I have outlined on how to host Hugo generated website on Amazon S3 and serve it with CloudFront CDN. Even though it works flawlessly, it is still not possible to get CloudFront to support Simple URL without the use of Lambda@Edge.

Therefore, I have decided to enable Simple URL and move to Microsoft Azure Blob storage and serve it with Azure CDN.

I have decided against implementing Lambda@Edge because I feel…

1. Introducing Lambda@Edge an unnecessary hurdle.
2. I am open to using Microsoft Azure or other Cloud Providers and not tied to AWS.

I I have been hosting my static Hugo generated website on Amazon S3 and serving it using Amazon CDN CloudFront. It works flawlessly except one aspect of CloudFront where it will cause a problem if you enable S3 Bucket Restriction on.

CloudFront only allows you to specify a default root object (index.html), but it only works on the root of the website such as nish.com -> nish.com/index.html. It does not work on any subdirectory such as nish.com/about/. If you were to attempt to request this URL through CloudFront, It would do an S3 GetObject API call against a key that does not exist.

This This website was initially created with WordPress a long time ago. There have been several template changes over the years and finally, I was able to get everything working when I installed Thesis Theme around 2010.

Even though WordPress was working for me, it was taking a toll on my time when I had to make sure the security aspect of the website is constantly maintained.

Over the past few years, static Webhosting has become popular since the introduction of Amazon S3 / Azure Blog storage hosting. This has addressed one of the main issues I had with WordPress, which is Security. Even though WordPress code is very old, in my opinion, is a great solution for the right problem. However, it is not the right solution for a small blog like this one. I had to constantly make sure that the code and plugins are all up to date and the website is fully secured for any attacks.

There There has been a rumour floating around lately that Amazon is going to be introducing Ethernet switches. A move like this by Amazon will eventually challenge manufacturers like Cisco Systems. I have came across a video from Packet Pushers where Greg Ferro talks about the possibilities and avenues which Amazon would take to venture into the switching or even networking arena.

As Greg stated, Amazon, in this case AWS already run their own network on their own hardware and software. This is because they cannot have a profit margin by relying on another vendor. It would be cheaper in the long run, to run on your own hardware and software managed and manufactured by themselves. Furthermore, it will be near impossible to run the biggest cloud architecture in the world and run the network on some other vendor. They would most likely run their underlying network as a fabric, controlled by Software Driven Network SDN such as OpenFlow and run the rest of the architecture virtualized and controlled by the AWS console.

It It is always best to have Two-factor authentication (2FA) to any method of access control. The following post will guide you to enable 2FA on Debian Linux environment.

It is assumed that we will be using Password Authentication in conjunction with 2FA.

Install Google Authenticator

apt-get install libpam-google-authenticator

Edit /etc/pam.d/sshd and add the following.

auth required pam_google_authenticator.so nullok

Edit the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config and make sure you have the following enabled.

UsePAM yes
ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

Run Google Authenticator from the account.

google-authenticator

Add the account to your Google Authenticator app and save the emergency codes.

When When it comes to subnetting most people usually stop at /30. This will give them a netmask of 255.255.255.252 thus resulting in two usable IP address along with one Network and one Broadcast address.

The /31 subnet prefixes was introduced in RFC3021 which defines that it can be used on a point-to-point link. A point-to-point interface does not need broadcast address, therefore we don’t really need to assign a /30 address prefix. On a /31 bit segment, both addresses are interpreted as hosts addresses.

The main advantage of using /32 prefix will enable us to limit the number of network address required on a segment. Therefore, if a company using multiple point-to-point networks using public IP addresses, then they will be able to save half of its allocated IP space.