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How to Create Strong Passwords

August 3, 2018 By Ty Cahill

So how do we create strong passwords that are harder to crack? Common sense certainly plays a leading role, but here are some quick guidelines:

  • Don’t use words found in the dictionary.
  • Mix in numbers and symbols, when possible.
  • Use capital and lowercase letters.
  • Length matters! Longer passwords can take significantly longer to crack.
  • Never re-use a password from another website.
  • Use a password manager to generate unique, random, strong passwords. My favorite is 1Password.

 

 

Backdoor Account in Western Digital MyCloud NAS Devices

January 9, 2018 By Ty Cahill

If you own or use a Western Digital MyCloud network storage device, listen up! Several security vulnerabilities were found last year by researchers, and Western Digital has recently fixed the problem…but you’ll need to update the firmware on the device. The problems include a backdoor account and other vulnerabilities that together can allow attackers to gain full access to the device. And once they’re on your NAS, they have full access to every other machine on your network.

Check if your MyCloud is vulnerable and update the firmware as soon as possible.

Vulnerable:

  • MyCloud
  • MyCloudMirror
  • My Cloud Gen 2
  • My Cloud PR2100
  • My Cloud PR4100
  • My Cloud EX2 Ultra
  • My Cloud EX2
  • My Cloud EX4
  • My Cloud EX2100
  • My Cloud EX4100
  • My Cloud DL2100
  • My Cloud DL4100

Not Vulnerable:

  • MyCloud 04.X Series
  • MyCloud 2.30.174

More information is available at BleepingComputer.

Ember Tips, Tricks, and Training Materials

October 20, 2016 By Ty Cahill

I hate Ember.

I love Ember.

Daily I oscillate between those two extremes. But the deeper I get into Ember, the more I can appreciate its design and functionality. It does a lot right out of the box, and whatever it doesn’t do can be added in very easily once your understand Ember’s conventions. Unfortunately, learning those conventions comes with a very steep learning curve. The Ember project has been evolving at a rapid pace and much of the documentation to be found online is outdated or misinformed. So on this page I’m going to list the best documentation I’ve found, and I’ll attempt to keep things up-to-date.

Right now I’m using Ember 2.4 and 2.8, so I’ll avoid linking or commenting on anything in the 1.x version unless it still applies to 2.x. My focus is best practices and patterns for Ember 2.4 and newer.

 

 

Remove the WWW!

July 15, 2015 By Ty Cahill

There are some very strong SEO benefits to standardizing the links to your website by removing the “www” from your URLs:

  • Preventions Google search engine penalties for duplicate content
  • Less bandwidth usage if you have many links per page
  • Shorter URLs

Removing the WWW from your page URLs can be done in your .htaccess file so you won’t have to go to every page of your website and remove the “www” from your links. But going forward, it’s best to never use the WWW in your links or marketing material, since the .htaccess file will create a redirect, and limiting the number of redirects is always a good thing.

The .htaccess Code

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

And if you’d prefer to use “www” in all of your URLs, you can use this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

Don’t forget to replace the “domain.com” text with your domain name! :-)

iPhone 5 and 6 Charging Problems

December 28, 2014 By Ty Cahill

iphone5-lightning-portI recently started having trouble charging my iPhone. Hours after plugging it in to charge, I’d return to find the phone’s battery at the same level I left it. Turns out the iPhone 5 and 6 are prone to having dust, lint and debris build up in the lightening port–the hole at the bottom of the iPhone where the cable plugs in.

Fixing the problem is pretty simple. Get a can of compressed air and blow out the debris. I was shocked to see how much lint and dust blew out of my lightening port! Do not try to blow out the debris using your mouth because the moist air will make the dust and lint stick to the inside of the phone. (Same goes with blowing out dust from your computer or any other electronics.)

Keeping my phone in my pocket was probably the source of the problem. My phone will still stay in my pocket, but I now I know to use a little compressed air to clean out the lightening port every few weeks.

Dissecting darodar.com and ilovevitaly.ru Referrer Spam

December 22, 2014 By Ty Cahill

what-is-referrer-spamMany website owners have recently checked their Google Analytics account and found referrals from darodar.com, ilovevitaly.ru, and other unfamiliar domains. If you try visiting these domains you’ll be redirected to a shopping site–often Amazon or Ali Express (Asia’s equivalent of Amazon). This is referral spam, being distributed by deceptive affiliate marketers (I like to refer to them as “bad guys”). This new wave of spam is a little different because the affiliate marketer is not visiting your website to get themselves listed as a referrer. Instead, they are passing along fake information directly to Google Analytics, which can make it difficult for website owners to block.

how-darodar-referral-affiliate-spam-worksLet’s walk through what’s happening.

  1. First, the bad guys use your Google Analytics Tracking ID to tell Google they just visited your site–even though they didn’t–and send their website as the referring domain. This gets them listed in your reports.
  2. Next, you take a look at your reports and see the bad guy as a new referrer. You naturally want to understand who linked to your website, so you visit their domain to learn more.
  3. When you land on the bad guy’s website you’re browser receives a “404 Not Found” status and a snippet of HTML that redirects you to shopping.ilovevitaly.ru. This is the HTML you receive:
    <html><head><meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=UTF-8'><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://shopping.ilovevitaly.ru"></head></html>
  4. When you get to ilovevitaly.ru, your browser is sent another redirect to aliexpress.com, with the bad guy’s affiliate ID included. This earns him a commission on anything you buy from the shopping site. Here’s the actual HTML that comes back from ilovevitaly.ru:
    <html><head><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/zV3VvBIEu"></head></html>

How can you stop this referral spam? Google Analytics gives us a predefined filter that makes it pretty easy. You should create a new View for this filter so your data isn’t ruined if you do something wrong. Here’s a screenshot of what the filter will look like:

google-analytics-hostname-filter

In the Hostname field, enter the domain name of your website. Click Verify this filter to see how the filter will affect your data.

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