Last week, I received a Twitter email notify me that Twitter has reset my account password. I thought it was a scam but it is not, Twitter has been hacked.
Twitter, the world popular microblogging site, has been hacked and attackers may have gained access to 250,000 user passwords. Twitter has reset passwords for the 250,000 accounts and send email to the users.
Twitter has been hacked and reset 250,000 passwords. Tweet This
In the age of mobile banking one must protect their personal information more than ever. With increased freedom to carry online banking activities anytime and anywhere including on a laptop, desktop computer, tablet or smartphone, so comes an increase in the need to protect online privacy.
We’re fortunate that a bank deposit, withdrawal, account transfer, balance inquiry, and even the ability to scan and transfer checks can be made from the privacy of your home at 10 PM, from an airport while traveling, or from a café via a simple SMS text with your bank or an automated command using a mobile application. However, there are still plenty of dangers to mobile banking and one is still held responsible for their own protection from threats like device loss, phishing, malware or viruses, spyware programs, and even financial fraud.
I told you that my server was under malicious traffic attacks. The server is more stable now but still can see load spikes now and then, even though they didn’t bring down the server.
From the above graph, you can see the server load of past 2 weeks. The highest load was around 140! Imagine that kind of load on a 8 cores sever! Impossible to handle. What we know is that the attacker use cloud computing like Amazon EC2 to launch the attacks.
Is it “Cloud-based DDoS”? The dark side of cloud computing…
So, what can a home-based blogger like me do to fight against the massive attacks? The software based protection such as firewall, (D)Dos-Deflate, etc have been installed. They helped a bit but not the solution.
I’ll need a fully managed web hosting with high security and DDoS protection at affordable (not “cheap”, I understand the setup is expensive) price tag…
Am I asking too much?
In the past week, my server was down couple times due to massive attacks from unknown sources targeting liewcf.com (this blog).
The malicious traffic caused high server load (load spikes) and brought down the server. Restarted web services didn’t help.
That was very frustrating. Website uptime is essential for a full-time blogger, just like how important is the car for a taxi driver.
Website down = No traffic = No $$$
I spent hours and hours sitting in front computer to monitor the server load. Mood went down with the server…
Here I have to praise the support of my hosting provider — Liquidweb.
In order to monitor my server for load spikes that happen randomly, server admins are assigned for 24/7 close monitoring. *thumbs up*
In the end, the server admin blacklisted the IP addresses to return the server to normal stage.
So far, the server performance is good now. There are still some load spikes now and then, but eventually they go down before bringing down the server again.