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Geoffrey Chapman - Macrotone Blogs - Page 19

Macrotone Blogs

Macrotone blogs upon Joomla, our products and other matters.

An IT professional with a wide experience of IT systems, specialising in Database Management and Security.

Four steps to comply with PECR, ICO cookies regulations

The new PECR regulations, announced by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in 2011, will be enforced in May 2012. In advance of that date, organisations are expected to take appropriate steps to be compliant, which include making proactive changes to their websites.

The absence of clear guidance on cookie compliance, and the range of practical difficulties that will be encountered in determining what to do with each identified cookie, may lead many website operators to struggle with the compliance process. To make the process easier, here are four steps you can take to make the appropriate changes to your website in order to comply with the PECR cookie regulations.

This article [Requires registration] discusses the steps to take further.

End of the line for Oracle Discoverer?

Having used Oracle Discoverer for many years and developed a few applications for clients using the tool, it was sad to see the statement of direction from Oracle in January 2009 encouraging users to migrate to Oracle Business Intelligence.

Whilst recognising that things cannot stand still Oracle Discoverer was a very good relatively light weight product.  Oracle Business Intelligence whilst being a good product doesn't really class as light weight, which ever way one looks at it, requiring a Web server and all that that entails.

This recent article is just another encouragement to those Discoverer users to migrate.  Could we soon be seeing the nail in the Discoverer coffin?

PECR Regulation compliance

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) governing the use of electronic cookies, announced in 2011, will be enforced in May 2012. In advance of that date, organisations are expected to take appropriate steps to be compliant.

This will impact all/most sites including Joomla where cookies are used.  A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that websites place on their visitors' computers, and despite its small size, it can reveal a lot of information website visitors may not be eager to share. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) provides specific guidance on PECR compliance and recommends a cookie audit as the first step. This article [Requires registration] explains how to audit cookies on an organisation's website.

Session Fixation Protection

Came across an interesting article on Session Fixation Protection [requires registration].  In essence a session fixation is a vulnerability caused by incorrectly handling user sessions in a Web application. A user’s session is usually tracked by a cookie, which is assigned when the user visits the page with the Web application for the first time. The problem occurs when this cookie does not change for the duration of the browsing session; users authenticate and log out, but their session cookie remains the same. This is often the default behaviour of an application.

Whilst understanding the problem, I tend to wonder just how much of a problem it actually is in real life.

The only solution is correct coding of the Web application, always assigning a new cookie immediately after a user has authenticated on a site.

Resolving short URLs

One thing that we are seeing more and more often are links identified by short URLs.  These on the surface seem very handy and avoid typing but they hide the real site and it is very easy to hide a malware site behind them by tricking users by actually redirect the user's browser to a site hosting malware.   This is easy to do using a popular URL shortening service like TinyURL, Bit.Ly, and many others. For example http://bit.ly/uKClxK is a shortened URL and yes, in this case it is safe to click, you may go ahead...

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Joomla PHP White Page Error

Whilst developing Joomla extensions I sometimes get a White Page error.  I discovered this interesting post by Phil Taylor that I have edited and reproduced below.

Sometimes, due to a PHP error, a Joomla Extension can stop working and, without displaying an error, leading you to a blank page.

 

In that case, to find out why, perform the following actions:

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Technical Article links

The following are interesting articles that are generally informative and may prove useful to someone in the future.

Scaling a PHP MySQL Web Application, Part 1

Scaling a PHP MySQL Web Application, Part 2

The DBA’s Guide to Setting Up Oracle RAC One Node and Oracle Data Guard

The DBA’s Guide to Setting Up Oracle RAC One Node and Oracle Data Guard, Part 2 (Advanced)

MySQL and Oracle Goldengate

Password Control User Profile Plugin

Just in time for Xmas, the first release of the Password Control User Profile Plug-in 0.0.1 is now available in the download area.  This optional plug-in works with the Password Control System Plug-in to display information in the users profile of their last and next scheduled password change.  It works with version 0.0.4 and up of the system plug-in.

   The user plug-in also provides the site administrator with the ability to change a user's next password change date, subject to the settings specified on the system plug-in parameters.  See the documentation for more details.

MySQL versions and binlog_format settings

Following on from an earlier post, there has been further investigations into the settings of the binlog_format setting for MySQL.  The problem is possibly aggravated by the use of InnoDB tables, which are the default in MySQL 5.5, the use of which offers some distinct advantages.  This setting seems to have been introduced in version 5.1.5 of MySQL.  Prior to that date it didn't exist and attempts to use the setting would generate an error, which is not totally surprising.

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MySQL logs and QNAP systems

 

All (most) company development and testing making use of MySQL databases locates the databases upon QNAP systems.  The default MySQL installing being by the QNAP installation itself.  Recently there has been some interest in the space being consumed.  Looking at the database settings in the /etc/my.cnf file it can be seen that it is not optimum.
The main areas of interest are the log files.  It is noted that the binlog format is set to STATEMENT which is why the messages about log format have been seen.  [It is not known how many systems are set to the default so it is sensible perhaps to leave the setting alone.  In this way we have a 'worse' case scenario for when we distribute software and have to include session settings to enable the software to install and/or function.]

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