Most web developers know that they should sanitize their web input. However recent figures from the UK Security Breach Investigations Report 2010 indicate that 40 per cent of all website attacks are due to SQL injections. SQL injection attacks allow perpetrators to leak data, usually by making a web application perform a query it wasn’t [...]

I’ve been really excited about the potential of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL6/CentOS6) and the beta has not let me down. Most of the more prominent features are laid out at the Redhat website but one of the things it neglects to mention is how much more access control it comes with.

A couple of weeks ago the Linux Kernel 2.6.35 was officially released. For me, this release hasn’t been as exciting as say, 2.6.30 but one thing that whet my appetite was the support for distributed incoming network load. But what’s the fuss all about? Here I demonstrate how spreading incoming network I/O over multiple CPUs [...]

Last month a significant milestone was achieved, but it would have passed by most people unnoticed. The Apache HTTP Server announced its 15th anniversary.

This week provides a little extra excitement in the world of Linux. The newest version of Ubuntu (10.4) has been released for testing!

Every day I deal with tens of critically important servers. Database servers, web servers, mail servers – pretty much any machine used in a live setup is important, which makes checking the health of the server critical too. Every decent application produces logs, but turning these logs into something that you actually want to check [...]

It’s been planned for months, the changes are all documented and even the next in line is already being worked on. None the less the excitement around the upcoming Ubuntu release is mounting! The new version of Ubuntu brings the usual bug fixes and package updates, but also lots of new software. This release includes [...]

Barely a few days ago the most recent version of one of the widest used security applications on the internet was released – OpenSSH 5.3. This little application has now reached it’s 10th birthday, and provides a set of tools which every system administrator who’s worth their salt uses daily. For the uninitiated (catch up [...]

Traditionally, change is brought about by ideas, contributions, team work and communities. This is no less so in IT. Just a few years ago software and applications were seen as magical entities and few people understood how they worked. This lack of understanding inevitably led to problems like users being locked into applications that vendors [...]

So, as my ongoing quest to expand the Linux user base continues, I want to mention the middle ground people often get stuck in. It’s often perceived as a no-mans lands between the two waring sides, however there is a “bridge of peace” between the two so to speak. This comes in the unexpected form, [...]