Archive for Internet Security
Hosting accounts has an access to a shared
secure server. Its not really a separate server but the web
pages are displayed through an encrypted connection. Every
page on a website can be called through this secured server.
Ports and Firewalls
Every computer which accesses the Internet
uses ports to communicate. Ports are almost like individual
conversations going on over the same telephone line but which
each port talking about a different thing.
Every time you access a website using http,
the chances are, you’ll be using port 80. For other
protocols such as FTP, different ports are used, in this case
port 21. Email, secure connections, streaming etc. all use
different ports which helps control the flow of data and filter
desired information.
Sometimes, a program wants to use an unusual
port number and if you have a firewall installed, it may be
set to block the port, preventing the program from communicating.
There are two key types of firewall:
Hardware Firewalls are often built into routers
and are generally more of an outer barrier preventing any
obvious attacks on a system.
Software firewalls are generally more configurable
and allow you to choose which programs can access the Internet
and individual ports can often be opened or closed down as
necessary.
Generally software firewalls have more flexibility
than hardware based and have the advantage that they go with
you wherever your computer is.
The need for a firewall is only to allow
desired programs and information to be sent from your computer.
Hackers and malicious code can exploit security holes in a
firewall allowing data to be sent. Port scans often detect
weaknesses and firewalls help to identify and protect against
these.
Hardware firewalls are particularly effective
for this. Software firewalls will often alert you if a program
wants to access the Internet.
What is the solution to avoid problems with a sitemap
file?
One possible solution is not to use any sitemap
file at all. In that case, scraper bots can still parse your
web pages through the normal links on your web pages but that
would be more difficult for them than using your sitemap file.
Another solution is to set up a sitemap file
and delete as soon as search engines have indexed that file.
Never use free sitemap generator tools. You don’t know
what they will do with your data and they might even use it
to create scraper sites with your content.
What is sitemaps XML files? Is it harmful for your
rankings?
The sitemaps protocols have been introduced
by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and many
other big search engines. A sitemap is an XML file that lists
URLs for a site along with additional meta-data about each
URL. This information helps the search engines to more intelligently
crawl your site. The sitemaps protocol is a standard that
makes it easier to create a sitemap that can be parsed by
all search engines.
Some search engine spammers used the sitemaps
XML files to easily find contents for their scraper sites.
A scraper site is a website that pulls all of its information
from other websites using automated tools. The scraper software
pulls different contents from other websites to create new
web pages that are designed around special keywords.
The new sitemaps XML files make it very easy
for scraper tools to find content rich pages. Although the
original intention of the sitemaps files was to inform search
engines about every single page of your web site, they can
also be used to inform spam bots about your pages.
IP Address Spoofing
IP Spoofing is a process of returning IP
address that is different from the one that is actually assigned
to the destination website. To involve in the IP spoofing,
the intruders use a variety of techniques to find an IP address
of a trusted host and then modify the packet headers so that
it appears that the packets are coming from that trusted host.
If a user interacts with dynamic content
on that spoofed page, the intruder can gain access to sensitive
information on the particular computer or network such as
a credit card number or password, or install malware. IP Spoofing
is a big no no when in terms of Search Engine Optimization
(SEO). With the help of IP Spoofing, newer routers and firewall
arrangements can help protect your network from these malicious
cloaking and cracking techniques.
Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
The Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a high
level and commonly-used security protocol for protecting the
confidentiality and security of a message transmission on
the Internet. SSL is more commonly used by most commerce servers
on the World Wide Web for secure transactions.
SSL is an open protocol that has been submitted
to several industry groups as the industry security standard
and it is denoted by the letters https:// in the URL. Based
on RSA Data Security’s public-key cryptography, SSL
uses a program layer located between the Internet’s
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Transport Control Protocol
(TCP) layers.
The “sockets” part of the term
refers to the sockets method of passing data back and forth
between a client and a server program in a network or between
program layers in the same computer.
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