Milan Cole

SSH Security Notes on CENTOS or Debian

Milan Cole — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:22:05 +0000

Administering a web server means dealing with a server that is literally constantly under attack. And having your server get hacked is certainly not a fun experience. So I make an effort to improve security where possible. Here are my quick and dirty notes on securing SSH on a new server.

First, we add a non-root user:

adduser myusername

And set a password for our new user:

passwd myusername

Now we give this user permission to gain root access.

vi /etc/sudoers
And insert the line
myusername ALL=(ALL) ALL

This allows us to disable root login in the sshd config.

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
And uncomment the following line.
PermitRootLogin no

I also suggest using key based authentication so you can disable password logins to ssh completely. For more info on doing this, go to :
http://www.howtoforge.com/ssh_key_based_logins_putty

Monsoon India has amazing lighting

Milan Cole — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 05:01:47 +0000

Dinner at sunset in Maui

Milan Cole — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:29:50 +0000

Free beer with your haircut

Milan Cole — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:49:27 +0000

The first time I visited Portland I remember being surprised that they served beer at the movie theater. Now I am not so surprised that they serve beer at the barber shop/hair salon, Bishops.

Day 1 at WordCamp

Milan Cole — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 16:41:59 +0000

Scott Berkun from automattic is talking about blogging every day and how he and the wordpress development team are starting to do this internally. It’s a great practice which he calls dogfooding; I love this word. The great part about this is that when developers use their own products then they get better, faster, because they experience the same frustrations that we as users do. More dogfooding please

Evan Soloman is talking about a/b testing. He ended with a note that a .org plugin is forthcoming. Exciting.

Diigo for Organizing Web Research

Milan Cole — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:20:17 +0000

I just tried Diigo which is a web-based tool to organize information found on the web. I know, it sounds like a mouthful. Anyway, I created my homepage and it appears that this tool is the evolution of social bookmarking tools. It allows you to mix bookmarks with your own notes and images. Seems like it would be most useful as a tool for academic type research projects.

Breitenbush Hot Springs Is A Great Way to Unplug

Milan Cole — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 03:31:00 +0000

You know you are a little too wired when you need to go somewhere with no cell phone service and no Internet to fully unplug, but thanks to the mellow folks at Breitenbush Hot Springs that is exactly what I did this weekend. Miles of hiking, hours of soaking in hot tubs, and good vegetarian food that I didn’t have to cook and clean up; the cabins here are an excellent way to go Glamping!

80s night at the crystal ballroom

Milan Cole — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 07:07:09 +0000

Unbelievably popular!

Lamborghini in Portland

Milan Cole — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:27:16 +0000

It’s not everyday you see a Lamborghini on the streets of Portland Oregon.

Web Based Screen Shots

Milan Cole — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:48:32 +0000

I ran across an interesting tool today that allows you to make web based screenshots and then easily post them to a webpage or twitter feed. Here’s my test:

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