Securing Things

A Few Weeks Ago

A few weeks ago I got a message saying that some of the sites I had password saved in had been hacked by somebody and my passwords might have been leaked. Because of that I decided I'd better do something more serious about my passwords.

Change the Passwords

First I have to change them. Since I'm changing them I may as well do the real good thing which is to make a different password for every site. That means that I have to use a password manager cuz I can't remember all those passwords. When I looked in the browsers to see how many passwords I had saved, there was more than 400, and I couldn't possibly remember all those - that's why I always say using a password manager is essential. As I discussed in Awesome experiences with AWS services, it also helps with security measures.

Password Manager

I decided to look for a password manager that was run in Linux. I came across key pass and that was pretty good but it didn't actually integrate very well on my Android or some of the browsers. I almost gave up. However, then I stumbled upon pass, a simple and reliable password manager specifically for Linux that uses gpg encryption - which is exactly what I needed. This relates to Status Being Monitored where I discuss setting up servers and monitoring them regularly.

Mutt

Then when I was looking at using mutt as a console or terminal based email program it said use pass. Pass is a password manager specifically for Linux. It's super simple and it's rock solid reliable because it uses gpg which is like super hard encryption passwords. So now I'm going to get things set up using pass. This whole thing got me thinking about security.

Minecraft

Then last night I discovered that somebody got into our Microsoft world, I mean not Microsoft but Minecraft. I didn't have any security measures on it so they didn't hack their way in; they just went in... the world it was open. But they weren't invited and they're strangers (and they trashed the place and left nasty messages... ) and I decided I'd better make Minecraft a bit tighter.

Security Measures

So I changed the IP address and the port... no I didn't change the IP address, I changed the port I put the guys who came in on a bond list and I set up whitelisting on the Minecraft server. Now it's locked down tight and I feel really good about that.

Security on my Websites

Another security measure I'm taking is to move all my sites over to AWS. As I've discussed before, using AWS services like Amplify and Dynamo DB can be beneficial for security measures. For more information on setting up servers, check out Status Being Monitored. If I use Cognito from AWS, then I don't have to do the authorization, as explained in my previous post on Awesome experiences with AWS services. AWS does all the authorization for me and that's a higher standard than I can do. So that's another measure of security that I'm looking at these days, and I've also been exploring ways to improve my server setup, which I wrote about in Status Being Monitored. In fact, another benefit of moving all my sites over to AWS is that it's a pay-as-you-go system, which aligns perfectly with the principles outlined in Status Being Monitored where I talk about setting up servers and monitoring them for optimal performance. That's a huge savings.