ETC Blog, The Tech Resource
Websites Can be a Huge Source of Spam and a New Service Addition to Fight it
For a while I've noticed an increase in the amount of spam making it into my inbox. Sometimes it even evaded all of the spam filters built in by Gsuite and Offic3365. I began researching and found that my website was an increasing source of spam getting to me. How...
New Pricing Announcement for ETC Maryland Shared Hosting
I had earlier announced that web hosting for ETC Maryland will be increasing. The new price structure is: Micro: $105 per year Standard: $130 per year Enhanced: $175 per year Fully Managed: $500 per year All features remain the same upgraded features as noted on the...
ETC Maryland Notification of Hosting Rate Increase
ETC Maryland is going to be raising rates on Jan 1, 2022. The amount of the rate increase has not been finalized yet. However, there is one benefit that needs to be detailed now. All existing and new accounts that sing up before Dec 31st 2021 at 1159pm will NOT be...
ETC Maryland Upgrades Hosting Plans
ETC Maryland has made some changes to it's hosting plans. All accounts now get the following: 1. Divi Sitebuilder package 2. Customizr Pro Themebilder 3. Wordfence free plugin(Fully Manged gets the premium version) 4. All data transfer allotments have been doubled....
When A Hosting Client Exposes a Bug…and Takes Your Server Offline
I was at my office workstation looking at web1 when suddenly my site...and every other site on web 1..vanished. All i started seeing was MySQL database connection errors. The amount of errors escalated until MySQL crashed completely. Attempts to restart MySQL...
ETC Maryland Has A Limited Time Product Announcement
3x Intel Xeon vCPU Cores 58(10 Usable) GB PURE SSD RAID-10 Storage 2.8 GB RAM 5,000GB Monthly Data Transfer 10 Domain Virtualmin Pro License 1 Dedicated IPv4 Address Limited IPV6 availability. All system and software updates handled by ETC Maryland 14 Day archive of...
Some Companies do NOT Deserve Responsible Disclosure
Microsoft is one of the biggest. software companies...this is widely known. What is not widely known is there are parts that are vulnerable by design. The recent print nightmare vulnerabilities have one of them that could be easily triggered with little or no user...
If Your Router is Out of Support You Must Replace it.
Even the big companies end of life products. Security research continues against these devices though as the installed base continues to be very large. These end of life devices present a severe threat to your networks. The Cisco RV110W, RV130, RV130W, and RV215W...
The Comcast Business IPV6 Issue…Resolved
Remember this post?Comcast sent a tech out with another modem. This time it was one of their Cisco "towers" as i call it. I got that one installed...and thins got worse. The modem first booted up. the tech then loaded the static IP configuration file. I had ipv4...
Comcast Strikes Again
i ordered a block of 5 static ipv4 from Comcast. Of course they require us to use their modem/gateway device. AND it's also a technicolor(known in the industry as technicrap). I almost rejected the install right there..and looking back, i should have. The issue i...
Another Wrinkle with TrueNAS
One of a clients backups are using 5-8 terabytes of disk space on a cloud backup. the disk usage on the NAS itself(due to zfs native dompression is 2.7 TB. It's taken a while to figure out but it turns out Rclone(which is what truenas uses for it's cloud backup...
WordPress 5.8 is released
The folks at Wordfence have a good video about the new Wordpress revision 5.8. It's got some new image type support along with a removal of support for internet Explorer. There's other feature updates as well. Fully managed clients will be getting upgraded after a...
Exciting Times Are Ahead for ETC Maryland
ETC Maryland will soon be a DBA of Emmanuel Technology Consulting. As the business has grown the days of sole proprietorship are done. This is going to allow ETC Maryland to grow further and serve clients with a wider selection of services. It will also allow us to...
REvil Ransomware Strikes at MSP’s to Encrypt Thousands of Companies
This is now the SECOND time their VSA product has been compromised. How Kaysea still exists at this point....I have no idea. https://helpdesk.kaseya.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360000333152 (previous compromise) https://helpdesk.kaseya.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4403440684689 ...
10 Things Your Host Needs to Have..Wordfence
ETC Maryland has services for those who want fully managed hosting to if you want to do nearly everything yourself. Let's go through the points Wordfence raises: Backups. We do two backups per day. One is at noon and is on another server in the datacenter. The...
Web Server Upgrades Completed..Along With A Side Benefit
I just completed a server replacement. Here's the vitals on the two machines: Old Web1: Dual Xeon 6 core L5640 12 cores w/HT @ 2,2ghz for a total of 24 threads cpu release date 2010 64 gigs ram dual ssd's in RAID1. 50 megabit connection Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Virtualmin...
Web Services Downtime Alert
You can also see there service alerts on the Twitter page. This upcoming Sunday Jun 27, all web services will be offline from 5pm until midnight. This is to facilitate a server replacement and upgrade. New hardware, operating system, and Internet connection will all...
My Base Unifi Settings For Those With IOS Connection Problems.
A common refrain i see from folks is they are having problems with IOS and Unifi. I simply do not have these problems..but I have some default settings I use on every single site I setup to start with. These are controller settings..i use on everything. Cloudkey,...
SCALE Project ends as Quickly as it Begins
Remember this post? My quest for an open source hypervisor as part of my ongoing software stack continues. It appears SCALE will not be part of that stack going forward. I have since figured out that SCALE is not going to be able to handle the use case I am looking...
Watchguard firewalls Under Active Credential Attack
I do work for another firm out in California and one of the biggest clients there suddenly found their guest network offline. When the firewall was attempted to be logged into all account credentials have either been changed or deleted..locking us out of the...
Thrive Theme Vulnerability Allows unauthentic Remote Takeover Of WordPress Sites
Wordfence discovered these vulnerabilities in the Thrive Theme had been silently patched on March 12th. As of the 23rd many sites using this theme and it's associated packages were still not updated. Further analysis discovered two vulnerabilities than when used...
Some Android Devices Experiencing Performance Problems. Google Release a fix..That’s Only Part of the Story.
So a story is going around about an Android component update...however it's mainly the non-pixel phones that are being affected. All other android vendors install other software in addition to just Android. Int he case of Samsung it's android, then Samsung's software,...
Elementor Site Builder Plugin Vulnerability Announcement
The wildly popular Elementor site builder plugin has a vulnerability that can allow a third party site to secretly compromise a Wordpress site if the user is logged into the site as the administrator. Normally when you are on one site..a third party site is blocked...
A New Research Project Begins
With the completion of my ransomware resistance storage research and product announcement, I have now embarked on a new research project. I am looking for an open source virtualization host. I have already tried XCP-NG and I just could not get it to work...
Major Remote Authentication Bypass Vulnerability in Elementor Plugin Leads to Site Takeovers
A plugin for the Elementor sitebuilder has a major vulnerability that allow remote attackers to create administrative accounts without any need for authentication. The admin users can then do anything a Wordpress user can do which is add or remove content, create or...