CloudInsidr - Page 14 of 19 - Cyber security, infotech

Anna E Kobylinska 2016-02-10 Leave a Comment

How to set up Letsencrypt certificates on AWS EC2

[updated 2018-06-12] As browser makers continue their push for HTTPS and mobile applications are becoming the target of MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, cloud developers and administrators are scrambling to find affordable SSL certificates that can live up to the demands of the cloud era. Enter Let’s Encrypt, a new Certificate Authority that is open, fully automated, and free to use, with an almost unprecedented, generous allotment of 100 host names per certificate. Let’s Encrypt delivers on the promise of a worry-free, fully encrypted web 3.0. Cloud Insidr lifts the veil off of Let’s Encrypt’s setup, configuration, its few surprises and hidden gems.

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Anna E Kobylinska 2016-02-10 Leave a Comment

How to Use Letsencrypt across Servers in the Manual Configuration Mode with a CSR

Generating SSL certificates when Letsencrypt (what is Letsencrypt, who is behind it, and how the heck can you get started) is available for your system works in a breeze, but what if you need your certificates for a machine that won’t take Letsencrypt (for whatever reason)? It is still possible: you can either grab Letsencrypt from Git, or, for reasons of practicality… create a certificate signing request (CSR) on your target server, transfer it to your letsencrypt instance, generate the certificates you need, then transfer the generated files back to your target instance and install the certificates in your software.

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Anna E Kobylinska 2016-02-05 Leave a Comment

How to Set up ip2nation: Geotargeting Made Easy for the Amazon Link Affiliate Plug-in and Your Server-Side Scripts

The Amazon Link plug-in for WordPress implements geotargeting based on ip2nation, a free geotargeting library from Per Gustafsson Consulting (available here). If you are wondering what you need to do in order to integrate the Amazon Link affiliate plug-in for WordPress (seing how a separate installation plugin for WordPress is two years old as of this writing, and counting), here is a quick howto for those who can access their websites’ MySQL or MariaDB database servers.

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Anna E Kobylinska 2016-02-04 Leave a Comment

RegEx Bliss: Set Up URL Redirects in NGINX Using Regular Expressions without Rewrites

There are two major no-nos when it comes to writing NGINX redirects:

thou shalt not use ~~if statements~~ (that’s a major no-no);
thought shalt not use ~~rewrites~~ (they are a waste of resources, as in “slow” and “expensive”).

Instead, use ol’ good location blocks. But what if you have plenty of URIs to redirect? How do you deploy RegEx magic with NGINX? Easy.

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Filipe Martins 2016-01-12 Leave a Comment

Quick Tip: Flush the DNS Resolver Cache on Your Computer when Changing DNS Configuration

When migrating a web service or adjusting DNS settings you may come across unexpected behavior of your site long after all errors have been fixed (or so you thought before hitting the Reload button). The hard reality is that in their quest for speed, web browsers try not to make new DNS requests they deem unnecessary. The result is much screaming&steaming from administrators who are in the middle of a job.

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