Secure web pages with PHP/MySQL

While there are numerous examples of poorly implemented web applications causing all sorts of security problems, the first step to take when developing in a PHP/Apache environment is to make sure your application always works with register_globals switched off.

The second step is to never trust the user to enter safe data in your applications web forms.

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Automatic MySQL Backup

If you need to archive your MySQL databases in a Linux environment, there’s no better tool than Harley’s AutoMySQLBackup.

The main script features include:

• Backup multiple MySQL databases with one script.
• Backup all databases to a single backup file or to a separate directory and file for each database.
• Automatically compress the backup files to save disk space using either gzip or bzip2 compression.
• Can backup remote MySQL servers to a central server.
• Runs automatically using cron or can be run manually.
• Can email the backup log to any specified email address.
• Can email the compressed database backup files to the specified email address.
• Can specify maximum size backup to email.
• Can be set to run PRE and POST backup commands.
• Choose which day of the week to run weekly backups.

Easy to setup, configure and, combined with cron, really useful too.

PC Inspector File Recovery

Have you ever had to recover deleted files on your Windows XP/2000 computer? Not the ones in your “recycle bin” but the ones you’ve permanently deleted?

I have, and on several occasions. The best tool on the market is a product from Germany called PC Inspector File Recovery. I’ve used it a number of times and recommend it highly. While not perfect (nothing is), it’s very easy to use it does the job beautifully the overwhelming majority of the time.

Download it yourself, just in case you need it someday soon.

But do it before you lose any files.

Looks and smells like comment spam

Lately we’ve been getting a few of these types of comments, which seem to slip through the cracks, even though we’re using one of the best anti-spam applications there is:

Name: William Smith | Email: Michael@yahoo.com | URI: http://www.eweek.com/ | IP: 210.100.138.124 Reading your content just made my day. Keep the good work. Green is feature of Small Cosmos: http://abcnews.go.com/ , Rape Boy is very good Grass when Soldier Double Chair Loose , Roll Increase Forecast - that is all that Mistery is capable of when TV is Game it will Do Circle

It looks like comment spam and smells like comment spam. But the websites referenced are not only legit but very popular as well. So, what is it? Perhaps a general attempt to pollute centralised anti spam blacklists?

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Are Bitacle blog thieves too?

I have previously talked about websites which offer stolen content in the guise of some sort of “service” and now we’re been forced to ban Bitacle from accessing our server.

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