Announcements

Recall -- A few weeks back, I announced that I would be making major changes to the infopackets web site. Since making that announcement, I have rewritten the newsletter delivery program to optimize distribution and to collect statistical ... information as the newsletter is delivered. The information gathered now allows me to see which newsletter emails are being accepted, rejected, or failed during delivery. The information collected can also be used to prune the subscriber base by identifying email addresses that continually bounce. Side note: Optimizing the newsletter delivery program is of ... (view more)

Earlier this week, I informed Readers that our web server was assaulted with a Distributed Denial of Service ( DDoS ) attack. After writing Tuesday's article, I invited some comments from Readers concerning the attack. Infopackets Reader Steve S. ... writes: " Dear Dennis, The likelihood that the DDoS attack was a result of your recent article on web security is most likely not the case. I would tend to look at this issue from a more statistical point of view by mapping out the available data on who gets attacked, where and when. For this reason, I believe that the attack on your server was ... (view more)

Dear Infopackets Reader s, Over the weekend, our web server was attacked by hacker(s). Although security was not compromised, the attack resulted in the web server being temporarily shut down until my hosting company could safely implement a data ... mitigation filter to deflect the attack. In a nutshell, the attackers sent a flood of information to the web server and caused it to "choke" on incoming requests. Because the attack originated from multiple IP addresses (I.E.: from more than one computer), this type of attack is referred to as a DDoS attack (or, Distributed Denial of ... (view more)

With respect to yesterday's feature article regarding new changes affecting our web site, Infopackets Reader Paul B. sent me the following Visitor Feedback: " Dear Dennis, Just a quick comment: Keep up the good work! I have never been disappointed ... with infopackets or any of the products I have purchased thru the site. Thanks for that. I do have one question, however. I just read the 06/01/2004 issue of the Gazette, where you reported that you are writing web scripts [I.E.: special web server programs] in order to transform the layout of the infopackets web site. In writing this email to ... (view more)

With the main web server upgrade finally complete, I have decided to up the ante by implementing a new 'control panel' which revolutionizes the way that users interact with our newsletter and web site content. In a nutshell, the new layout will ... allow Readers to post comments after each newsletter article, jump to relevant topics, download complete issues via email, search past issues, and much more. This change comes after announcing last week that our newsletter will soon be available via RSS news feeds . Other changes I also plan to re-write the newsletter delivery program so that email ... (view more)

I'm going to break away from our regular genre of discussions held in the featured article section of the newsletter and take this opportunity to inform Readers of a few things happening with our web site. Issue #1: Problems receiving email The ... Netsky email virus is causing all sorts of havoc -- especially for our main server. Before delivering the newsletter to our Readers, I always send out a few test messages to my own email accounts to ensure that things are in proper order. Unfortunately, some of the test mailings never made it through the mail queue on our main server. Subsequently, ... (view more)

After announcing that our main server needs upgrading, quite a few Infopackets Readers emailed me over the weekend and asked if there were other ways they could help out financially. Infopackets Reader Anne C. writes: " Hi Dennis! I just wanted to ... let you know that I've replied to your request to donate infopackets.com in order to help keep your website maintained [and protected against hackers]. A suggestion: perhaps you should charge an annual fee like some websites do? I certainly wouldn't have a problem donating $10-15 dollars a year to keep you up and running. PS: Keep up the good ... (view more)

Yesterday's newsletter took quite a while to put together, so I'm going to relax a bit and get into some news about some recent changes to our web site. RE: new eBook and video due next week I am working on a new eBook and video dedicated to PC and ... Internet security. I plan to have this completed by the end of this weekend and hope to release it by next week. In short, the eBook will accent previous discussions from our newsletters, while detailing the necessary steps to secure any Windows PC. Freeware software solutions will be reviewed in the eBook, whereas the video portion of the tutorial ... (view more)

After announcing that most of the bugs have been worked out of the new infopackets mail server, the main web server started having issues of its own. Subsequently, I was only able to send out 2 newsletters last wee k. In not so many words, the main ... server appears to be choking on bounceback email messages. Since there are literally hundreds of bounceback messages received every day [due to viruses and spam], the infopackets server eventually became overloaded with processes which looped endlessly, caused high CPU usage, and ate away at valuable memory resources. The processes were overloading ... (view more)

Recall -- In mid December 2003, I mentioned that the infopackets web server was too stressed to continue delivering newsletter emails to Readers, and that an additional dedicated web server was needed. Early last month, I ordered the new server and ... began programming it to do nothing more than process and send the email version of the infopackets newsletter. Unfortunately, this required quite a bit of work and technical expertise using an operating system that I'm not very familiar with (Unix). Side note: The Unix operating system was developed by Bell Labs in the late 1960's. The main focus ... (view more)