Security In Shared Hosting Environment
May 26, 2009
I am in a shared hosting environment. Their php's setting does not have open_basedir set and safe_mode is off.
I was poking around their server and noticed that using some simple system() calls within a php script, I was able to access /etc/passwd and therefore access all their client's public_html.
I am currently calling them to let them know of the vulnerability. But out of curiosity, is it normal that I can read all the other site hosted? They do have config files with mysql pasword in it.
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Apr 17, 2009
I have seen some shared hosting providers include cPanel. As far as I understand cPanel is to manage and install apps on VPS. Why would you need that on shared hosting?
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Aug 3, 2008
Has anybody successfully used nginx in a shared web hosting environment?
It seems quite powerful and looks like it would be well suited for such an environment, combined with FastCGI, looks like it could serve a lot of hits on relatively inexpensive servers.
The main problem I'm foreseeing is a demand for mod_rewrite, which may cause some support headaches.
Anything else I'm not thinking of?
(I did search but the last post I found was from 2007 with no replies, and necroposting is bad)
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Jan 21, 2007
I'm running a shared hosting environment and I'd like to know if it's even possible to secure the Apache while it's running mod_php. I know I could go suPHP with PHP-CGI, but that'd increase drastically the server load.
So what should I do to best secure the server?
So far now I did:
- Apache:
Installed mod_security and mod_evasive.
- PHP:
Set register_globals=OFF
Set disable_functions = ini_restore, popen, exec, shell_exec, system, passthru, proc_open, proc_close
Set safemode=ON
Set open_basedir to user's directory on virtualhost
Is that would be a secure environment for my users?
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Mar 18, 2009
One of my friends uses a popular shared hosting provider, and I was assisting him with a web site issue earlier.
I noticed the following warning in the host's control panel:
"[MySQL databases] may not be used for log evaluation operations, ad clicks, chat systems, banner rotations, or similar applications putting extreme loads on the database under any circumstances."
Is this common at other shared hosts?
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Mar 17, 2008
Is 40 max_user_connections for MySql typical in a Shared Hosting environment? Or are there Shared Hosts out there that allow more than 40 max_user_connections per account?
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Nov 18, 2008
I'm a web designer trying to find a web host for a client. I've set up several clients, including the one in question, at IX and haven't had a problem until the other day, when my client's site was hacked. A redirect code was inserted, taking the user to a false site that installed a virus. The offending code was removed by IX but the client's experience with their tech support was less than satisfactory. I've seen similar stories on this forum and others.
I'm looking to find another host and have some questions about security on shared hosting plans. I understand that they're not completely secure but I'm wondering if certain hosts or certain servers are more susceptible to hacks than others? I see very little, if any, mention of security on sites of hosts offering low-cost, shared hosting plans.
Fewer low-cost hosts seem to be offering dedicated IP addresses. Is a shared IP address going to be less secure than a dedicated one?
My client's site is info only -- no ecommerce or user login -- so it doesn't have to be Fort Knox, but they shouldn't have to worry about it being hijacked either.
Lots of questions, I know. It's my first time posting on this forum, so be gentle.
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May 10, 2008
I've been reading these forums for a while now... a lot of very interesting and useful stuff. However, I've always been happy with the hosting of my site until recently, and have never had a pressing reason for wanting to change.
However, I recently had a four day outage to my site. The hosting company (which shall remain nameless, for now) put this down to a security problem which meant they had to take down the shared Windows server and go through all the sites on the server looking for the site that had bad code which caused the security outage. I also has problems with malicious javascript being injected into my pages prior to this.
I quote from the hosting company "Unfortunately this is a shared hosting solution and by its very nature, it means that poor code affects all sites on that web server. .... The vulnerabilities of ASP, MS-SQL and .Net are well documented." They then proceeded to try to sell me a dedicated server (which I believe will likely be too expensive for my needs).
I'm no expert on hosting, but this doesn't sound right to me. Is all Windows shared hosting afflicted with these kinds of security problems? or only when it's not set up right? I need reliability, but not absolute 100% bulletproof uptime if it comes with a dedicated server pricetag. I do need to avoid outages of a number of hours/days (!!) however
Hopefully one of the experts here can put me right I can't believe that Windows hosting security is that bad that no company can have a shared hosting product that avoids the aforementioned problems. What do you think?
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Sep 10, 2007
MySQL 5.0 supports stored procedures -- but is it safe to allow shared hosting customers to have privileges to create them? If the procedures are global, does that mean that:
a) one customer could write a procedure which accessed another customer's data?
b) any customer could call a procedure created by a different customer?
c) any customer could override an existing mysql function in a way that would affect other customers?
d) any customer could write a function that bound to a system library and crash the entire server instance?
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Oct 11, 2012
Does the apache virtualhost environment lower the web or apache server's security? virtualhost has no security issues.
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Jun 16, 2009
i want to install subversion on my shared environment,
i want to ask if it will waste alot of system resource or any problem?
my server is centos with cpanel
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Mar 8, 2008
Pros/cons? Success stories? Security/stability? Tried w/ cPanel? Yes/no?
A good friend handed me a SLES disc awhile back and I'm loading it up now to give it a shot on a whitebox with one of my test domains and IP's. Anybody have anything to share?
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Sep 2, 2008
I'm running SQL 2005 in my hosting environment, and plan on offering as part of my plans.
The one issue I'm having is any user can view all the databases. My main issue is I need to store client information (sorry, I only can afford one server) into the database. Basically I'm creating *all* the backend panels, management, etc in ASPNET/C#.
The database will have FTP, email, payment, etc stored it in. Should I hold off and only offer mySQL? I DO NOT want the users seeing my databases like that. They can't access them, but still. I don't know what Microsoft was thinking!
I was thinking about developing my own SQL Manager where you could execute scripts, edit/create tables, and do everything you needed right inside of your webbrowser. This is, of course, a lot of work when you can do it easily in SQL Manager express. I imagine my way would be easier since I could make a list of blocked commands, run a check on the commands the user is executing, and block them.
By the way, I'm running Windows 2008 x64 w/IIS7 and the entire panel will be custom made by me and two other programmers, with me being the lead developer.
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Jun 3, 2008
my friend and i are working on some web-based-commerce ideas and at current we're at godaddy.com. i can only imagine the vitriol they've rightfully earned here, as we decided to be done with them when the $30 SSL license they told us we could get one night quickly became $78 because there was a new "turboSSL server" package we needed, nevermind the guy the first time said with our hosting options we only needed to go through them for the SSL license, so basically, either the first guy lied to us or the second guy tried to hustle us, either way, i dont like companies whose sales model is revealed like the plot in a horror movie, so we're looking to go elsewhere.
basically we're looking for a virtual private server setup, although actually another question i'd love to ask someone is if joomla is better served on unix/linux or windows, with a few dozen accounts needed, and by accounts i mean domains and whatnot, as right now it's basically the blanket idea that you grab the names you need, or might go to if you change your mind on company names...
so basically, with all the people here talking about bad experiences with places, are there any good experience type places where someone can get competent tech support, no hustling in sales pitches, and quality service at a nice solid price?
again, sorry to show up and start asking for things, but i'm not necessarily well versed in these arts yet... rest assured once i have some information i shall contribute to the community and help others who are in my position now
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Apr 23, 2009
I'm trying to find at least three web hosting companies to choose from to host a Joomla websites on a shared server. Would consider dedicated if the deal was right. I have a friend of mine who wants to create a church website, and is looking for the best deal. I use Netfirms which I have never had an issue with, but I didn't want to be bias, and would like give him other options to choose from.
Is there a good WebHosting Review site, I could check out, or maybe someone could recommend their top three. I reading threw the forums here and I noticed there are not that many complaints with Hostgator. Again, I just want to see if there was anything out there better.
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Apr 2, 2009
This question gets asked a lot in our Helpdesk and I figured I would post our knowledgebase article here to help anyone else wondering the Pros and Cons of Unlimited Domain Shared Hosting vs. Reseller Hosting. If anyone has anything else to add, I appreciate any feedback on how we can improve our KB article.
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Given the present state of shared hosting, many clients may ask "Why would I need a Reseller account if I can host unlimited Addon and Parked domains within a single shared hosting account?". There is certainly enough Disk Space and Bandwidth provided in many of today's hosting packages, so why bother to purchase a Reseller account?
Many don't realize the drawbacks of hosting large numbers of domains within a single hosting account until they've already packed tens of them onto a single package.
So how do you know whether a Reseller account or Shared Hosting account is right for you? The answer is in how you plan to provide access to others and how "mission-critical" the sites are. You should consider the following factors when deciding on hosting a large number of domains:
1. Who will be managing these sites?
2. How important is site security between sites?
3. Will these domains need dedicated SSLs?
4. How resource intensive will these sites be (RAM, CPU, MySQL)?
In a nutshell, Reseller plans are for those who wish to host websites for other sub-clients and a shared hosting package is for a single individual managing multiple personal domains. We'll go over the 4 points above in greater detail.
1. Who will be managing these site?
If you personally own multiple domains and wish to host them within the same hosting space, you can easily do so with an Addon or Parked domain. An addon domain will allow you to host a new domain within a subdirectory of your hosting space. A parked domain will allow you to have multiple domain names point to the same content. Since addon domains reside within the same user space as your main domain, you can manage all of your domains with a single login. You can see the problem if you want to provide another user with access. Since all accounts are managed with a single set of login credentials, if you give another user access to their addon domain you are also giving them access to your main domain. If you have vital information stored on your main domain and you are hosting another domain as an addon domain for someone else, you cannot provide them access to their hosting without compromising the integrity of your main domain.
When hosting sites as a Reseller, your clients in turn will want access to their account and will want exclusive rights to their disk space and server resources. With a Reseller account, each sub-account you create gets its own username, password, and isolated user space on the server. Individual clients of yours have access to their user space and their user space alone. In addition to the isolation with regards to access concerns, each account also gets their own cPanel access. All of the same great features that you use to manage your sites can also be given to your clients. Next time client Y wants to add an email account, you don't have to do it for them for fear of giving them access to your cPanel, you can simply give them their login details and they can manage their own email accounts.
2. How important is site security between sites?
This is along the same lines as point 1. This is not necessarily related to who you are hosting for, but what content you are hosting. Imagine that you are a webmaster and you are hosting your own personal site-in-a-box community forums (such as PHPBB or vBulliten) on your main domain and a company website for a paying client on an addon domain. It is not uncommon for popular scripts to have security flaws in older versions. Script authors will often update security flaws in later versions of their software. For this reason, it is very important to keep scripts up to date on your site. But let's assume you forget to update your scripts for a couple of months and an unscrupulous individual takes advantage of a well known security hole. Using this exploit, they gain access to your forums and any subdirectories. Since you are hosting another domain as an addon, they now have access to this domain's content as well. A site defacement on this company's site may not bode well for you when they are considering you for web master services in the future.
If these two domains had been separate into two individual users (i.e. two subaccounts created through a Reseller), their content would've been inherently isolated server side by Linux's user management. Sure, your forums still would've been affected by the security hole, but the break-in would've been isolated to your site alone.
Going back to our example, let's say that instead of a corporate website as an addon domain you are hosting an image gallery site for all of your cats. In this case, it may not be a big deal if a compromise in your main domain spreads to your addon domain. After all, they are both owned by you and you're only losing some time and effort to restore these sites from your local backups (which I'm sure you've actively maintained ). But then again, you are losing time and time is money. If these sites had been separated into individual users, again, you'd only have to restore one site's content.
The idea here is isolation. Reseller plans provide you with the peace of mind to know that if one of your users doesn't keep up with their site's content as actively as they should, their actions won't negatively impact the content hosted on other domains. If you and those you host in your addons are diligent webmasters, maybe this point won't have much bearing on your decision. Only you can say for sure.
3. Will these domains need SSLs?
As of this writing, SSL certificates must have a dedicated IP address to be installed. If you are hosting multiple domains on the same shared hosting package, you can still install an SSL (or purchase a dedicated IP address and install one) but you are limited to exactly one SSL on your account. If you are hosting multiple domains on the same package (and consequently the same IP), you must choose which domains gets to have the dedicated SSL.
Sub accounts of Resellers can each be placed onto separate IP addresses and, as a result, can each have their own dedicated SSL installed.
Of course, both shared accounts and Resellers' sub accounts can use the server's shared SSL free of charge. However, some clients prefer to see their domain in the URL bar when they visit https.
4. How resource intensive will these sites be (RAM, CPU, MySQL)?
We've already established that disk space and bandwidth will be no problem. But what about CPU, RAM, and MySQL resources?
It's important to be aware of the resource needs of your website. As administrators, we have to make sure all users "play nice" on the server. We can't have user X eating all of the CPU cycles computing pi to the trillionth decimal place while you are trying to serve web pages to your loyal visitors. We have to monitor the actions of all of our users and in the event someone is stepping beyond the bounds of acceptable resource consumption, we have to take action. In most cases, this entails disabling the abusive script, but in extreme cases we have to suspend the abusive user account to prevent other domains from encountering performance degradation on their sites.
If you are hosting 100 domains as addon domains, all serving nothing but static HTML pages, maybe you will stay off the radar.
But considering most sites are more complicated than static HTML, you may want to be aware of how many sites you host as addons and what content they serve. If you're hosting the latest and greatest Joomla modules, with up to date news feeds, integrated forums modules, polls, blog posts, etc your site can certainly require a degree of CPU to serve your pages. Now imagine you have 5 or 10 of these sites all hosted as addon domains. The resources these sites need to generate their content can quickly add up and before you know it you've got a friendly email from Acenet, Inc. in your inbox wondering why your user is consuming 2 of the 8 CPU cores on the server. That may be an exaggeration, but you get the idea. In the event your resource usage becomes so excessive that we have to suspend your user, now all of your sites are down instead of whichever one may be the direct cause of the spike in CPU, RAM, or MySQL consumption.
If each of these had been separate Reseller accounts, the offending account could've been suspended temporarily while we work through the cause, leaving the rest of your domains live and kicking.
The conclusion here is that you need to be aware of the needs of your sites in a general sense. Hosting unlimited domains within a shared hosting space is certainly a nice feature. For those webmasters who have multiple presences on the web, it's very convenient to be able to manage all of their personal domains from a single control panel. For those entrepreneurs who are hosting multiple domains for other individuals, the features and security associated with a Reseller plan and the inherent isolation of Linux users is a must have.
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Jul 31, 2014
I'have a problem with my aps setup on sanbox.When i create on customer ccp when i click finish i have this error. I must only test.
Error: Instance of application with id 124 and version '1-4' can not be provided: There is no resource of class 'Shared hosting Apache' with provisioning attributes 'Web Cluster' in subscription with id 1.:There is no resource of class 'Physical hosting (IIS)' with provisioning attributes 'Web Cluster' in subscription with id 1..If i add the shared hosting apache resourse i get this error : There are no "apache" services that satisfy given attributes: "Web Cluster".
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Apr 8, 2008
I am conducting some research into potential risks that web hosts have to deal with on a daily basis. What potential security risks are there for web hosts ? And how do they overcome these issues?
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Mar 24, 2007
I have hosting - php/apache - with Orchard Hosting, and I've been with them for many years and there's never been a problem.
Then, a couple of days ago I realised from my logs a text file had been put in a directory in my webspace without me knowing anything about it. I emailed my host and they said it could have happened by either:
1. someone using ftp and getting into my account
2. someone injecting PHP through a form on the site.
I've added some code to my validation to look for <? and fwrite keywords but I think it's secure! But in the logs, there's no visits to the pages where the forms are (one of which is AJAX powered) - so I'm not sure it's injection.
Is someone using some kind of anonymous connection to my FTP (which shoudn't work!) the most viable reason why this has happened?
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Jun 11, 2007
I have a server is running windows 2003 enterpirse as WEB HOSTING. It don'nt configure to become Domain Controller. Anyone advise me that Should I do if this server will attached by hacker, virus or OS error,damage?
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Apr 26, 2009
From some weeks I try to have a secure install for my Debian. THis server will be a shared hosting host so need special security but I don't know how to do this.
My requirement are :
- Apache
- PHP (mod, not cgi)
Actually, users can navigate into my server by using phpshell script. And someone put lots of file into /tmp directory so I tri to secure all of that but don't find good tuto for that; do you know where can i have some?
And what about php using cron so execute with php-cli how to secure it?
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Jan 20, 2008
About next week, I'll put a Linux box on the web.
Could anyone suggest what kind of security measures I could implement?
Iptables:
- Protect against DDos?
- Protect against certain worms?
- Protect against flooding?
Services:
- Protect against constant dictionary attacks based on ports?
Pretty much any experience you could put down in this thread would be invaluable.
Also mod, if this shouldnt be here. Feel free to move, Im not sure where it should go!
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Dec 15, 2008
I have read many helpful feedbacks regarding choosing a reliable web host. Most of the concerns are centered around costs. However, I am more particular about the relative security of my website in addition to other perks such as space, speed and bandwidth. I rate my concerns on a 1-10 scale:
Security 9/10
Bandwidth 7.5/10
Disk space 6/10
E-mails, backups, etc: 8/10
Cost: 7/10
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Jul 19, 2007
Which methods is need to protect a hosting server?
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Jul 13, 2005
I am developing a website for a client of mine (the client is a close friend and know's that he is getting a newbie). This site will be larger (project wise) than anything that I have ever done (everything I have done in the past has been FrontPage). We will be using several third party applications that need to run on the server as well as our own custom developed applications. We do not yet know how much access to the server's deeper structures we will need for all of the applications that we want loaded on our server to run. Things we have in mind: oscommerce, mysql, php5, apache, linux, vbulletin, blogger, phpbb, adserver, ect... Would these things run ok on a shared host and would I have full authority to configure them without needing full access to the server? Or will I need access to the entire server (dedicated server) in order to have full customization capabilities? I guess all I am trying to figure out at this point is will shared hosting for a large project limit our abilities to use 3rd party apps, or do most 3rd party application designers build their stuff to work in a shared hosting environment anyway? If we need to get a dedicated server we will, but if we can get away with shared hosting for a while (especially during development when the site will not be generating revenue) it would be nice to avoid the price of a dedicated server. Many thanks for your comments, insight, and expertise! Also, if anyone can sight some common scenarios that may require a dedicated server over a shared hosting plan, that may help me to understand what the limitations of a shared hosting plan vs. a deicated or virtual dedicated server are.
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Aug 17, 2008
Here is my dilemma, thanks to a thread in these forums I was directed to a hosting website called pc-core.net and I was interested in using them, because it does not appear that they oversell at all. My question is regarding the fact that they have the shared hosting for $12/month with ~5gb of disk space and 50gb of transfer. I then just looked at reseller hosting for the heck of it, and noticed i could get a reseller hosting account with 45gb storage and 450gb of bandwidth for $10/month. Even though I wont be selling hosting, or anything like that, can I use a reseller hosting account like a normal shared hosting account?...just with more space and bandwidth?
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Jun 13, 2008
I'm new to the VPS scene, so could someone tell me the difference between VPS and say shared hosting or dedicated hosting? Actually I really like to know what a Virtual Private Server actually is.. I know shared hosting is typically a single account on a server with several hundred other accounts which is used primarily for the sole purpose of hosting websites, and I know that dedicated hosting is functionally the same as colo except that you rent the server, instead of having your own purchased server plugged into some network. So what is VPS?
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May 6, 2008
Do website builders generally go with shared hosting or dedicated server? I mean, if they work on several websites would they get a dedicated server instead of shared? From what I understand through reading shared hosting is basically if you only have one website. So one with multiple websites would go with a dedicated server?
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Apr 23, 2008
I would like to know the different between the shared hosting and reseller hosting?
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May 8, 2007
I normally hang out in the web design area, so it there is a related thread, please point me there.
I have been hosting a very small site with, what I thought, was a respectable local company. This morning I went to my home page and guess what - my friendly neighbourhood hacker paid me a visit. Gone (commented out) is my home page content, replaced with the following text:
I would like to report that your site is highly compromisable. Please review your hosts security settings. I would recommend changing though, they are a piece of ****.
(I have not deleted anything. the original page is commented out but is still located in this file.)
This security message has been brought to you by Scorpian & AV.
How do I deal with this? If I get no response from my current hosting company on how someone got hold of my ftp password, I want to move my site, but how do I know the next company has better security measures? And what should these security measures include? Any tick lists out there for testing domain host's security?
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Feb 27, 2009
My information:
I have my photography site (sfxphoto.com) currently being hosted as my main site (site contents are located inside of the publichtml folder). I also have my photo retouching site (elite-retouch.com) being hosted as a sub-domain under the main site (which has it's own folder inside of the publichtml folder). I'm being hosted through InfluxHost on a Linux server.
My Dilemma:
For the photo retouching site, I want to be able to give my clients their OWN FTP access to a designated potion of the server.
So, lets say my client upload directory is "publichtml/eliteretouch.com/client_ftp". I then want to be able to make a folder for (we'll call him) client_a inside of the "/client_ftp" folder. So the full directory to THAT clients specific folder will be: "publichtml/eliteretouch.com/client_ftp/client_a"
How can I:
1) ...set their specific FTP to open to their directory only?
2) ...ensure that they cannot navigate to other folders on my server?
3) ...make it so that the login information doesn't carry the MAIN site name, but the sub-domain site name instead?
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