SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and it an old implementation of a crytographic protocol. TLS, or Transport Layer Security, is a new one. They are both used to have privacy in the communications between different parties. They are used to secure email, web browsing, instant messaging, etc These protocols work in a complex way […]

A brief introduction to SSL/TLS certificates

How to enable TLS traffic from the origin server on Cloudflare Argo Tunnel
As it can be read in the last post, setting up a Cloudflare Argo Tunnel to serve web content from home or corporate network without poking holes to it, is quite easy to achieve. In this article I’ll show you how to enable TLS traffic from the origin server on Cloudflare Argo Tunnel. Obviously, you […]

How to configure Apache HTTP with a TLS reverse proxy backend on FreeBSD
A few weeks ago I published a how to guide to configure Apache HTTP as a reverse proxy. On that ocasion I was following what the average guide on the internet does on Linux. A front end server with Apache HTTP on calls a backend server where the real site is sitting. Many backend calls […]

How to install RKHunter on FreeBSD
In this post you will find simple instructions to install rkhunter on FreeBSD which is a root kit “hunter” so your system/s will have some security in place for that kind of unwanted software. But for those who do not know what a rootkit is, let’s give it a simple definition (which you can get […]

How to install Drupal 9 on FreeBSD 13.0
Drupal 7 is approaching its original EOL (End of Life) date (Nov. 2021) which has been extended to November 2022 due to COVID’s impact. Most companies are using Linux already and have their upgrade plans in the works or are thinking about them. This is a good time to switch platform and use Drupal 9 […]

A few useful network commands
Troubleshooting network issues with simple commands is not a very difficult topic once there is a little toolbox to pull from. Needless to say networking topics can be very complicated and any specialist on the field will tell you how cumbersome it can really get. However with a few set of commands one can get […]

How to patch OpenSSH in FreeBSD 12.2
The default version of OpenSSH in FreeBSD 12.2 today, and it’s been this for quite some time, is not the most recent published by the OpenBSD guys, which by the way are the ones developing OpenSSH. Not only is not the latest but it has a few vulnerabilities affecting it, medium risk ones but nevertheless […]

How to install the ELK stack on CentOS 8
The ELK stack stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana. These three pieces of software are very useful since each brings a powerful capability that in combination is just great to use. Elasticsearch is a search and analytics engine. Logstash can process data from multiple sources. Kibana allows to visualize data in a graphic manner. These […]

How to configure the IPFW firewall on FreeBSD
Among the three possible firewalls on FreeBSD (choice is always nice) IPFW is the in-house built one. There is a default, easy way, configuration path but if one needs to build a box to act as a dedicated network appliance with packet filtering capacity fine tunning the IPFW firewall configuration is more than desirable. Before […]

How to install the FAMP stack
You may have heard of the LAMP stack which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP or Perl. This is the same but instead of using the GNU/Linux operating system we’ll use FreeBSD. This is the FAMP stack. There are two ways to install software in FreeBSD, packages and the ports collections. Which in the […]
