Website Hosting Services in Stockport

Firewall

A firewall is a software program or hardware device that checks information coming from the Internet or a network, and then either blocks it or allows it to pass through to your computer, network, or server, depending on your firewall settings. A firewall can help prevent hackers or malicious software (such as worms) from gaining access to your webserver through a network or the Internet. A firewall can also help stop your webserver from sending malicious software to other computers and servers. A firewall isn’t the same thing as an antivirus program. To help protect your webserver, you need both a firewall and an antivirus and anti-malware program.

Hacking

Hacking is when content is placed on your site without your permission as a result of vulnerabilities in your site’s security.

Hacking occurs when someone gains unauthorised access to a part of your webserver with write access. This can be through code, stolen passwords, or through someone else’s site on a shared server. Defacement is one result of a hack – just because you have fixed the defacement doesn’t mean you have fixed the actual hack. Almost all attacks are automated or begin in an automated fashion. Automated scans use databases of known exploits and techniques against websites.

Malware

This is one of the most common issues where the webserver is infected with malware, key-loggers, or spyware. The result of this is to enable the hacker to steal passwords and login information or to be able to attack the website while the user is accessing sensitive areas.

Directory Traversal/ Local File Inclusion (LFI)

Directory traversal is one of the most common attacks occurring today. It causes your web application to access a file or program located in another directory that should not be accessible or exposed publically. LFI is similar to Remote File Inclusion (RFI) except the file is located on the same server. In this case, the attack is used to gain access to sensitive data such as password files etc.

SQL Injection (SQLI)

SQLI uses parameters to run SQL statements via your webpages. The SQL statements could be used to dump the contents of a database or to view data such as User IDs, or to manipulate data in the database. This is one of the more common attacks.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)

Cross Site Scripting targets the scripts embedded in a webpage that are executed client-side on your browser such as Javascript, VBScript, Activex, HTML, Flash etc. The injected code/scripts can then be used to send malicious code to the user or to steal information from the user rather than from the website or database itself. A lot of websites are vulnerable to this type of hacking.

Remote File Inclusion (RFI)

RFI tricks existing software on your webpage to access malicious code elsewhere on the internet and to execute it with privileges.

Defacing or Defacement

Defacement is a substitution of a web page (or part of a page) by hackers. Defacement is the online equivalent of graffiti.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS)

DDOS is a type of attack on a website hosting server that is designed to cause the website hosting server to stop users accessing websites by flooding it with useless traffic. Many DDOS attacks exploit limitations in the communications protocols used to connect hosts on the internet. For all known DDOS attacks, there are software fixes that system administrators can install to limit the damage caused. But, like malware, new DDOS attacks are constantly being dreamed up by hackers.

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