Mark Carter said:
Do you run your own server, or use a hosting service?
We used to run our own servers...web, ftp, email, chat, news etc. We
haven't since moving to an area which only has dial-up. We're renting
hosting from a service which used to be good but seems to have really gone
downhill lately. We use their email server and have mail bouncing on a
weekly basis. We're currently in search of another hosting
company...someplace we can transfer our domain to. Once we are able to get
another always-on connection we'll be running our servers again.
The reason I ask is that where I work, we were thinking of setting up
internet applications for clients. I'm a programmer rather than system
administrator, so my main worry is not so much the complexity of
building an application, but about how to secure the server.
The first thing you want to do is find a reliable firewall. Then google for
exploits for firewalls. If you find exploits, continue to search for the
remedies. Keep a chart and select the firewall which is the lesser of n
evils. Don't be afraid to check places like sourceforge and
planet-source-code for some examples.
Since you like to program, I'd suggest you get a few example programs then
create your own firewall (it's not nearly as difficult as some people might
think). Build your own filtering system so that you can filter on more than
just IP or IP range. To give you an example, do like I did...set the
filtering up to filter on situations...like if someone were to attempt to
run a particular command or run a number of commands during a short span of
time alerting you to the fact that they are actually running a script of
commands. Of course there's more to securing a site than the little I
mentioned here, but it should get you started.
