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Showing posts from July, 2010

Fixing slow Apache on localhost under Windows 7

A couple days ago, I documented my recent experience with my wireless network and how I got hacked . I briefly mentioned that I'm installing Windows 7 this time around. Yesterday, I ran into an issue with 32-bit Apache 2.2.15 running on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. This issue appears to only affect 64-bit Windows 7 and 64-bit Windows Vista web developers attempting to run 32-bit Apache on the system. NOTE: I didn't test 64-bit Apache because that is experimental and 64-bit PHP is even more experimental. However, I doubt the results would be too different. The issue is slow response times (anywhere from 1 to 3 seconds per request) when connecting to 'http://localhost/'. Connecting to 'http://127.0.0.1/' and 'http://[NetBIOScomputernamegoeshere]/' have fast response times. I've seen various fixes around that seem to boil down to these three: - Disable the Windows Firewall. - Disable IPv6 support. - Edit the 'hosts' file. It look

My wireless network got hacked. Unremovable rootkit? New botnet tactic?

Edit (July 6, 2013): It has taken me almost three (3) years to come up with a secure WiFi solution since I first wrote and published this article. It is my professional and personal opinion that, outside of running 200 ft. of Ethernet (which I actually did), only a WPA2-Enterprise AES w/ EAP+TLS setup is secure . My hope is that you come to the realization that your own WiFi network is not secure as you read my story below. I take security VERY seriously and violations of that security even more seriously. Hacking my personal networking infrastructure is near impossible. Or so I thought. First, some background. I run...well, I used to run a wireless network access point. Yes, it is one of those consumer-grade, wireless network setups because I'm a cheapskate. The brand doesn't matter. Here's the critical bit of information: I ran the wireless access point with WPA-PSK (TKIP) using a completely random key of about 40 characters in length and a different SSID fr