Tag: Websites

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Atlanta hit by ransomware attack

This is actually [indirectly] courtesy of the US Government’s NSA, from a few years ago. They actually created the code that exploits Microsoft Servers that face the internet directly.

“It’s been almost a week since the City of Atlanta was hit by a ransomware attack, which encrypted city data and led to the shutdown of some services.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a press conference Monday that the city’s government is working on recovering the network after ransom notes appeared on computer displays on Thursday afternoon. The city has hired local cybersecurity firm SecureWorks to assess the situation.

Reports say the notorious SamSam ransomware was used in the Atlanta attack, which exploits a deserialization vulnerability in Java-based servers. Details of the attack remain largely unknown, but an early investigation may have identified who is behind the attack, said SecureWorks chief executive Michael Cote. Almost a million dollars has been reaped from other businesses that were infected and paid the ransom. It’s not known if Atlanta will pay the ransom.”

Article here.

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Free Azure Hosting and Custom Domain

There are limits to the free Azure hosting. It is free, after all, so it makes sense. But resources will be on the low end. Also, you cannot edit your DNS and web settings to make it a ‘custom domain’. If you are merely using Azure to test or experiment then this is fine. But to ‘go live’ or change your site from ‘MyTestSiteDummyName.Azurewebsites.Net’ to RealSiteName.Com’, you need to scale or really, upgrade Azure hosting. It is necessary to go to at least Shared mode.

az_hosting

So I want to once and for all get ‘Riguy.Azurewebsites.Net’ to open as simply, ‘Riguy.Com’. As of this moment, I have set a redirect HTML page at my old hosting  (Go Daddy) to point to the Azure site. This is cool, for sure. It is by design. But moving forward, I want to actually have my domain open … as my domain. Note that once I edit my DNS and site settings, the Azure instance will still be active.

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WordPress 4.0 is Out!

In another world [Windows Azure], I am using WordPress. I really love WP – it is not only the top blog site software these days, it is the top CMS as well. Put the acronyms aside – WP powers millions of sites worldwide and is basically at the tops of all the charts.

The new + always improved WordPress (4.0) is out!
I always like the ‘under the hood stuff’, as opposed to ‘bells and whistles’ stuff ;>

Straight from WP:

Under The Hood

General

  • Performance and effectiveness improvements to wptexturize()
  • Ensure custom post types nested under top-level menu items get the proper classes
  • Added a src parameter to the embed shortcode
  • Fixes for handling nested shortcodes
  • Make default ‘template’ argument of the_taxonomies() and get_the_taxonomies() translatable
  • Remove a redundant condition for comment feeds from WP_Query::get_posts()
  • The Customizer now properly honors theme support defaults for background images
  • Installed Themes search now shows a proper “no results” message
  • Improved, more consistent styling for HTML5 input elements
  • Post previews now redirect to the permalink if the post has been published
  • Email and URL input types have been implemented where appropriate in the admin
  • Most uses of extract() have been removed from the core code
  • 3gp mime type support was added
  • wp_handle_upload|sideload() logic was consolidated
  • Remove dead and unused code from dashboard.php following changes in 3.8
  • The operator argument now case-insensitive in tax queries
  • Now possible to disable drag and drop functionality in wp_editor() instances
  • Trigger _doing_it_wrong() when a registered post type or taxonomy slug is too long (20 characters max)
  • Widgets management in the Customizer to leverage the new Panels API.

JavaScript

  • Heartbeat API “experimental” labels have now been removed
  • Improved inline documentation for Media Views
  • Forces an autosave on switch from Visual to Text editor

Bug Fixes

  • Fix a notice with media attached to non-existent post type
  • Fix expanding and collapsing the admin menu on small screen sizes
  • Fix a bug where multiple Add Media buttons shared an ID attribute
  • Fix get_the_ID() not checking for a proper post object
  • Fix current track highlighting in audio playlists
  • Fixed bug with audio player not properly floating around images in the editor
  • Fix a bug where bulk actions would be performed upon clicking the Filter button in some circumstances
  • Fix remove_all_filters() always returning true via has_filter() in some scenarios
  • Fix a notice in wp_reschedule_event
  • Fix paragraph tags not being converted in PressThis for the Text editor
  • Fix get_the_excerpt() not always checking $post->post_excerpt
  • Introduce caching for oEmbed responses
  • Fix an issue where attachment display settings didn’t work for galleries
  • Leverage iframe sandboxing for audio and video, allowing arbitrary scripts to be loaded
  • Ensure all plugins have an accurate oEmbed provider list by loading them “just in time”
  • Fixed several problems with formatting of curly quotes, square braces, non-breaking spaces, and related performance issues.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_4.0