Country IP Blocks™ » Training

Validating IP Addresses Using PHP

Stewart White — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:29:24 +0000

PHP 5.2+ offer an excellent function for validating IP Addresses: filter_var(). The filter_var() function offers several flags: FILTER_VALIDATE_IP, FILTER_FLAG_IPV4, FILTER_FLAG_IPV6, FILTER_FLAG_NO_PRIV_RANGE and FILTER_FLAG_NO_RES_RANGE, used to filter or validate IP addresses based on whether the address is IPv4, IPv6 or within a reserved or private network range. For the purpose of illustration, let’s assume we want [...]

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Nine Paranoid Internet Security Tips

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:14:23 +0000

In its must read release of Websense Security Labs State of Internet Security, Q1 – Q2, 2009, whitepaper, Websense reveals several frightening internet trends. It seems no website is safe. For example, Websense reveals a 233% growth in the number of malicious websites in the last 6 months. Seventy-seven percent of sites spewing malicious code [...]

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Be Paranoid About Password Policies

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:08:36 +0000

Tip #1 Be Paranoid About Password Policies Every website, computer user and business must develop and enforce strong password policies. Proper password procedures may not alleviate your paranoia but it will help you sleep at nights. Use totally random passwords. Let’s face it, many people use low-tech, easy to remember and easy to guess passwords. [...]

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Be Paranoid About User Input

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:04:35 +0000

Tip #2 Be Paranoid About User Input One of the most security vulnerable areas of the web today is user forms. Websites use forms for all sorts of purposes. Whether you use forms to take orders, receive contact information or allow comments on your blogs or message boards, you need to start with one unbreakable [...]

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Keep your security patches up to date

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:02:08 +0000

Tip #3 Keep your security patches up to date Security patches exist because someone has discovered a flaw in your operating system, application, webform or configuration. Security patches are a must for open source and well known applications. Microsoft has the largest share of the OS market. Finding a flaw in Windows means a hacker [...]

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Be Paranoid About Your Website Traffic

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:55:27 +0000

Tip #5 Be Paranoid About Your Website Traffic Website hacks happen on one of two ways, from external sources or internal sources. You’ve established strong passwords, validated user input, kept your software updated and limited viewable personal and business data. You’re paranoid and off to a great start. But now you need to monitor your [...]

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Limit Your Exposure

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:48:19 +0000

Tip #6 Limit Your Exposure to Areas Where You Do Business If your website business sells widgets to a small area, limit the website traffic you will accept. If you own a restaurant in Milan and use your website to sell Cannelloni to the local neighborhood, limit acceptable traffic and input to your immediate area. [...]

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Be Paranoid About Backups

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:45:10 +0000

Tip #7 Be Paranoid About Backups Good backup policies are essential. Backups, just like server logs are your friends. Backups are excellent resources to have when your site is down, your server has crashed or you are moving your website to a new server. But there is another equally important reason to maintain original backups. [...]

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Be Paranoid About Your Email Addresses

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:42:23 +0000

Tip #8 Be Paranoid About Your Email Addresses Everybody hates spam except the spammers. Spam accounts for close to 90% of all email communication. It’s big business. It’s profitable. For the chance to make a millions to billions of dollars with very little effort, spammers have a great incentive to make your life miserable. Spam [...]

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Use Country IP Blocks

Stewart White — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:38:52 +0000

Tip #9 Use Country IP Blocks Country IP Blocks provides real time country specific network location data on every active IP Address around the globe. This data allows you to know the origins of your server or website traffic and respond accordingly. Using the data we provide you can allow, deny or redirect wanted and [...]

The Cheap Way to Keep Spoofed Email Out of Your Inbox

Stewart White — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:52:55 +0000

Email spoofing is on the rise. Country IP Blocks estimates that spoofing may account for more than 80% of all spam and malicious email traffic. Email spoofing is defined as the forgery of an email header so that the message has the appearance of originating from a source other than the actual source. While any [...]

Create Your Own Security Logs

Stewart White — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:26:13 +0000

Server Log files are your friend. Depending on your server and server settings your system produces a variety of log files. These may include access, error, SSL, ftp and other logs. Use them to glean important marketing, error correction and security information for your server and/or websites. But some administrators may not have access to [...]

Identifying the Network and Broadcast Address of a Subnet

Stewart White — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:52:54 +0000

In this lesson we will attempt to simplify the identification of the Network and Broadcast address using a known IP address, within the network or subnet, and the CIDR or Netmask. In this lesson we will walk you through the terms you need to know, the basic math and some examples. Terms you need to [...]

Decimal and Binary Conversion of IP Addresses

Stewart White — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:50:05 +0000

All network professionals need to have a firm grasp of the principles behind IP addressing. This includes understanding how an IP address is associated with a specific network. This is done by using a network address and CIDR to calculate the Network Address, Network Range and Broadcast Address. But the first place we need to start is with a simple understanding of an IP address and it’s conversion to binary and decimal.