Scott Helme - Scott Helme (Page 36)

PageSpeed - Performance optimisation made easy

PageSpeed is an open-source webserver module that is designed specifically to improve the performance of your site without having to make any changes to your content or workflow. By implementing a whole host of best practises, I saw a notable improvement in page load...

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POODLE

SSL v3 goes to the dogs - POODLE kills off protocol

Over the past week, rumours were circulating about a new vulnerability in SSLv3. No details were widely available until today and now we have POODLE, the 'Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption' attack. The attack, specifically against the SSLv3 protocol, allows an...

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encryption

Do browsers tell us enough about secure connections?

We've all grown used to checking for 'https' in the address bar of our browser and making sure that we have the little padlock indicator to assure us that the connection is secure. The only problem I find with these...

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CloudFlare

CloudFlare's great new features and why I won't use them

CloudFlare have recently announced two great new features in the form of Keyless SSL [https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-keyless-ssl-all-the-benefits-of-cloudflare-without-having-to-turn-over-your-private-ssl-keys/] and Universal SSL [https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-universal-ssl/]. Despite the fact that Keyless SSL addresses some of the concerns I outlined in my previous blog...

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Qualys

Squeezing a little more out of your Qualys score

Not so long back I published a blog on Getting an A+ rating on the Qualys SSL Test [https://scotthelme.co.uk/a-plus-rating-qualys-ssl-test/], which I recently updated to keep in line with the latest requirements on RC4 ciphers and SHA1/SHA256 certificates. Since then,...

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HSTS

HSTS Preloading

HSTS is the great little response header that tells a browser to always use SSL/TLS to communicate with your site. It doesn't matter if the user, or a link they are clicking, specifies HTTP, HSTS will remove the ability for a...

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WordPress

Goodbye WordPress, hello Ghost!

I've recently migrated my blog from WordPress to Ghost and I have to say it's awesome! It's faster out of the box than my heavily optimised WordPress install, much more simple to use and very, very clean. I&...

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DDoS

DDoS attacks, the plague of the Internet

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS [https://scotthel.me/f8g7]) attacks have gained fame in recent years after becoming an effective tool for hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec. What exactly are these attacks, how are they carried out and how can websites hope...

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encryption

SSL does not make a site secure!

Following Google's recent announcement that they will start rewarding websites that use SSL/TLS with a boost in their search rankings, I've seen a lot of comments being thrown around about how it's great that secure websites will...

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Encrypted Email

Encrypted email on your Android phone

In a previous blog I covered setting up encrypted email on Windows using OpenPGP and Thunderbird. In this blog I'm going to cover setting up encrypted email in Android using K9 Mail and Android Privacy Guard (APG). Getting setup on Android is...