From a penetration testing perspective to identify if a Web Application Firewall (WAF) is in place is essential. The next question is, does an administrator need to know this? My view is, anyone who is in charge of any system that has implemented some sort of WAF needs to verify this tool is working, at […]

How to detect a WAF – Web Application Firewall

How to configure Modsecurity 3 for WordPress on FreeBSD
A few weeks ago I wrote a guide on how to install Modsecurity 3 on Apache HTTP for the FreeBSD operating system. However there’s a catch with that setting and with Modsecurity in general. As good as it is as a WAF you need to at least adjust its configuration to the tool one pretends […]

Networking Dictionary
This is an attempt to collect all the necessary basic vocabulary to have a very basic basic understanding of networking. Because context is also needed, some concepts or historical references will be also shown. This dictionary is an informal one, for a better, accurate, more correct and in depth understanding look somewhere else, like the […]

How to install OSSEC server on Ubuntu
OSSEC is a host-based intrusion detection system (HIDS). It is specially well known for monitoring files that shouldn’t change on a system (such as critical system files, or binaries, etc) and warning administrators (or anyone you’d like) about those issues. But it does more such as rootkit detection and log analysis with a dedicated engine. […]

How to export a MySQL database.
You are your website editor, owner and now administrator. You want control over the whole process and you are migrating from a managed site. Or you are a versed user on unix-like environments and you are just willing to export your database. This is a simple post on how to export a MySQL database. If […]

How to install Mate on FreeBSD 12/13
In this how to install Mate on FreeBSD I’m not going to repeat the same guides you can read elsewhere. If you desire to use FreeBSD as a daily driver desktop, I do encourage you to read and follow the guides from this other guy. The guide you are currently reading can be considered the […]

How to secure FreeBSD (server minimal edition)
This is a very simple and easy to follow guide on securely administer your FreeBSD server. That said I am not a security expert although I’ve gained some knowledge as time goes by. Not pretending to be the definitive guide this article is an introduction on how to secure FreeBSD in which I will tackle […]

How to install the Clamav antivirus on CentOS 8
Clamav is a free antivirus nowadays owned by Cisco and developed under the umbrella of the Talos-Intelligence group. Don’t be fooled by the word free, this is serious business. It supports a wide variety of operating systems from Windows to Linux-based ones as well as FreeBSD. Many companies are using other types of antivirus software […]

How to compile cloudflared in FreeBSD 13/14
I happen to self-host my websites using Cloudflare’s services (article 1, article 2). Since the FreeBSD port seems to be delaying its releases and Cloudflare’s policy on maintaining versions only considers 1 year old code, in an act of prevention I have learnt, and I am publishing, how to compile cloudflared in FreeBSD. Note: At […]

How to use Fail2ban with WordPress
In a previous article we did an install of Fail2ban on a FreeBSD server. This tool can help us to protect our WordPress install, independatly from if we are using the FAMP stack or the LAMP stack. As I mentioned on that article Fail2ban is a complementary tool to our firewall. It works by scanning […]
