Master List of Blogging Tips and Articles

I occasionally blog about blogging, so to make these posts easier to find (and link to), here’s a list (index) of all the blogging posts on this blog, in alphabetical order, and by most popular.
I’ll add other posts as they are written.

WordPress Hacked, Attackers Gain Root

On 4/13/11, WordPress announced it suffered a root-level hack of their servers and that “anything on those servers could have been revealed.”

Nothing is said about WHEN the hack occurred. From experience, I can tell you that you generally don’t announce a security incident until you’ve investigated it thoroughly, and that can take at least a day, sometimes more, depending on whether you have experts in-house or can get them in a hurry.

This attack directly affects only blogs or accounts hosted by WordPress (in other words, your blog URL ends with “wordpress.com”. If you host your own WordPress blog, you are indirectly affected. How? Since WordPress source code may have been compromised, attackers may be combing through it to find vulnerabilities that will allow them to attack any blog running WordPress, regardless of where it’s hosted.

If you have a blog or account that is hosted at wordpress.com, at least do the following immediately:

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Creating a Culture of Security

I read a blog post that quoted a security professional saying,  ‘culture is defined as the beliefs we accept without question.’ The blogger, also a security professional, went on to say that his goal is to generate a new security culture, a security culture that “everyone accepts and makes a natural part of their activities.”

That definitely got me going, so I left a comment that explained why I disagreed with that statement.

Log in as Root or Administrator?

I know a lot of you are security conscious and some of you even roll your eyes at clueless users who seldom think of security. But how many of you regularly use an account on your home or work computer (or both) that have administrative or root privileges?

Most of you KNOW that using an account with privileged access on a daily basis to create documents, read email, and surf the web , etc., is a bad idea. Perhaps you think that because you’re more security conscious and more careful that it isn’t as much of risk for YOU.