Check Web Site

Monitor your transition to IPv6 with WatchMouse (2009-10-14)

You've heard it before, and it's being announced more frequently and louder: The number of available addresses on the Internet is running out, and we all should move to the new addressing scheme, IPv6, as soon as possible. The uptake has been rather slow in the past, but that seems to be changing now as companies, ISPs, and other organizations are taking their first steps on the road to the IPv6 world. For most of these companies, however, this is quite a big step, with many things to consider and many uncertainties.

External IPv6 monitoring

As of today, WatchMouse offers IPv6 monitoring for web sites and other external services of your company. The monitoring network will, just like visitors of your website that happen to be on an IPv6 connected network, connect to your site when an IPv6 record is available in the DNS of your domain.

Check your IPv6 connectivity right now? Just visit our Check Host tool or the Ping tool. And while you're at it, set up a rule in your account to monitor your site continuously from our world wide monitoring network.

Many changes

To fully enable IPv6 monitoring, we have upgraded several components of our infrastructure:

• Our worldwide monitoring infrastructure, including the monitoring software
• The backend systems, including our databases and the WatchMouse API (see a post on this on WatchMouse Labs).
• The configuration portal (settings), where you can now specify whether or not to monitor over IPv6, if possible.
• The free tools on our site: check host and ping.

By offering IPv6 standard in all packages (including the free package and the 30-day trial) and in the tools on our site, we hope to facilitate a smoother transition to IPv6 in your organization.

Is your company interested in IPv6? Then do keep an eye on our IPv6 posts on WatchMouse labs.

New release: many new features and improvements (2008-08-25)

The most recent release of our site and software brings not only many improvements, but also a number of interesting new features:

• You can now restrict the monitoring of your site to a selection of our monitoring stations.
  As we are adding ever more of these stations, this has become a recurring feature request.
  How: In the [expert mode] of your rule settings, select 'Checkpoint selection'. This allows you to choose the checkpoints that will execute this rule. In case of a 'Master' sequence rule, additional checkpoints will only be used for second opinion checks. Make sure you select at least three stations for redundancy purposes.
• New IMAP and POP3 checkers now support SSL and can send 'round trip' test messages.
  These test messages are checked in the next monitoring cycle thus implementing a full round-trip email verification functionality
  How: In your rule settings for IMAP and POP3 rules select "SSL encryption". Make sure you are in [expert mode], where there will be an email address field. When an email address is found in this field, we send a test email to it in each cycle, and check for its correct delivery in the next cycle.
• New DNS checkers with many more features.
  Test for A, CNAME, MX, NS, PTR, and AAAA records and test these on our local resolvers, on your listed name servers, or on specific DNS servers. The existing dnsa and dnsns type rule will be replaced soon by this new dns type rule. How: In the [expert mode] of your rule settings type the name or IP address to be tested, select the record type, and click look-up. Now select the DNS servers that should be queried, set the other options and click save.
• In many cases, the log viewer will now also show the DNS resolve times for each check. As we move forward, we will add this for all check types.
• The web site now offers a more flexible subscription model, allowing customers to mix and match a wider range of different rule types and intervals.
• The reseller console has undergone major improvements making it easier for resellers to manage their customers' accounts.

In addition, many improvements have been made and several smaller issues have been resolved, please refer to the change log for details.

All new features are available for current and new subscribers at no extra charge. And, as always: if you are missing a feature, please let us know! We will most likely add it in a future release.

New version of WatchMouse widget available (2006-10-03)

WatchMouse widget for Apple computers has been expanded: from local monitoring to worldwide monitoring.

The WatchMouse Site Monitoring Dashboard widget was already available for local monitoring, but the current version (2.0.4) can now also be linked to your WatchMouse account. The widget, which already checked one website every 1, 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes from your own computer, can now also be used to display the checks of the websites in your account and the availability of these websites during the past 24 hours. In the event of a malfunction, a check is performed by all WatchMouse monitoring stations. The widget provides an immediate warning or a warning after 2 to 5 successive errors.

The expanded WatchMouse Site Monitoring widget can be downloaded free of charge from the WatchMouse website and can be installed within 1 minute. URL: http://www.watchmouse.com/widget/dashboard_widget.php

WatchMouse Launches API-status.com (2010-01-20)

New Site Monitors and Measures Uptime of 26 Popular API and Cloud Services Websites; Report Reveals Amazon, Google and Yahoo Among the Best and Vimeo, foursquare and Yammer Among the Worst Performers

WatchMouse, a global industry leader in self-service website and application performance monitoring, announced the launch today of API-status.com, a new dedicated website for monitoring and measuring the real time availability and performance of the public APIs of 26 heavily trafficked, popular “cloud computing” mega web services including: Google Search, Google Maps, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, SalesForce, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Wikipedia and others.

API-status.com does a call and check for a valid result on each of the APIs, and if the result is wrong or is received after four seconds, it is noted as an error and unavailable. The percentage of availability or uptime is based on the number of errors reported; details on API-status.com include a seven-day history along with a 24-hour glance and performance indication by country.

"Nearly all websites nowadays include information from outside sources such as maps or social media feeds. It impacts millions of websites worldwide if these services and systems are slow or down and can invoke a global domino effect of breakages and slowness," states Mark Pors, CTO and co-founder of WatchMouse. "The four-second limit on the response time may seem strict, but it is actually a long time, especially when the (mash-up) sites need to do multiple API calls to present a complete page to the visitor."

According to a recent report produced by Forrester Research and Akamai, two seconds was revealed as the new threshold of acceptability for e-commerce web page response times.

30-Day Report Card and Methodology

WatchMouse monitored the availability of 26 API/cloud web services during the period of December 16, 2009 to January 16, 2010. The results found that Yammer API had the lowest availability with 96.06 percent uptime and Amazon, Google Maps, Google Search, last.fm, and Yahoo Maps with the highest availability with 100 percent uptime. In accordance with industry standards, availability of greater than or equal to 99.9 percent is regarded as "good" while anything below 99 percent is regarded as "poor" site uptime. The methodology for testing the sites includes one simple API call and check for a valid result. This typically means an authentication action for most APIs, including a login, followed by a search or listing action, plus a check of the expected result action. The expected result can immediately return as an error or if the expected result action is reported after four seconds, it is also logged as an error. These errors are used to create the percentage of availability or uptime for each of the sites. Each site is checked in real time using the WatchMouse Public Status Pages tool, which can be used to measure and report the availability of any public website. Companies use the tool, which is hosted on the Amazon platform to inform customers and report publicly on the status of their services.

Click here to read the full report of all 26 website services uptime or visit www.API-status.com for real time status and statistical data on each website.

About APIs

An application programming interface (API) is a set of data structures, protocols, routines and tools for accessing a web-based software application. The practice of publishing APIs allows web communities to create an open architecture for sharing content and data between communities and applications. Content that is created in one place can then be dynamically retreived, posted and/or updated in multiple locations on the Web.

About WatchMouse

Founded in 2002, WatchMouse is a global industry leader in self-service website and application performance monitoring. WatchMouse product tests the behavior and availability of websites, services and applications utilizing an infrastructure that includes 42 worldwide remote monitoring stations in 26 countries. Advanced remote monitoring helps eliminate website downtime, allows issues to be identified and resolved quickly and guarantees peace of mind that your website has been thoroughly and externally tested from the user’s perspective. WatchMouse’s web-based products are easily deployed and offer many features including: extensive reporting tools, root cause analysis, automated email and text/SMS alerts. WatchMouse supports Philips, ING, VeriSign and other leading global companies who depend on WatchMouse to provide independent confirmation of both in-house and suppliers’ website performance. WatchMouse is a privately held company headquartered in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Learn more at http://www.watchmouse.com.

What do you want to check with a service such as Watchmouse? (2005-01-31)

As I explained in my previous column, you can use a monitoring service in a number of roles. Common to all these roles is the fact that you are keeping alive some services for the benefit of your customers, suppliers, employees or partners. These users are, in the end, all that counts.

What are the objects that you should be checking? Obviously, the least you want to do is check the service that is most visible to these users. This could be the webserver, or a POP or FTP server for example. You would start by setting up a rule to check the server and a URL. The frequency with which you can monitor (that is: the elapsed time between checks) is typically limited by the type of subscription that you have. Only in specific cases would you not check as often as your subscription allows.

Note that there is a difference between a CONNECT on port 80 rule and a HTTP rule. The first just connects to the port that the webserver is supposed to use. The HTTP rule also checks whether the webserver can produce a valid HTTP response, and whether the document can be found. You probably want the latter check.
Similar reasoning applies to POP and FTP checks. If you set up two different rules on the same host, this allows you to distinguish for example between a broken webserver and a host that is down. If you want even more content oriented checks, have a look at the so-called PLUG-IN rules. Additionally, you can set up checks to make sure that your users are actually using the services that you intend them to. The whole Internet depends heavily on the domain name system(DNS) functioning correctly. If it does not work properly your users may be directed to another site than you intended. This could be a configuration error, but it could also be a defamation hack. In either case, you want to know.
First of all you want to check whether the root servers of the Internet accurately find the DNS that is serving you. This can be checked with a DNSNS rule. What you are checking with this rule is whether the registrar's databases are correct. Second, you want to check if that DNS server (and its slaves) are serving up the proper IP address for the server. For this you can use the DNSA rule, and it will warn you if the DNS server is not working or serves up the wrong address. (Note that the hosting party can change that address at its discretion, as part of a renumbering operation for example.)

Who should you notify of rule failures? Again, different roles have different information requirements. You want to notify the person who can fix things as soon as possible. Mail or SMS/text them directly, you do not want to be in the loop. You might set up an escalation chain, which fires off after a certain amount of errors. Note: make sure that you send the message on a channel that is not affected by the outage: if your e-mail system does not work, delivering a message to that effect should not depend on that e-mail system.
The people in charge of overseeing somebody else's service levels should only get escalation messages, if at all. Rather, they should get the weekly or monthly service reports.

Peter van Eijk is a management consultant specialized in management of network infrastructures. He can be reached via his contact page.

Flu Jab Your Website Against The Pandemic: 6,000 Infected Webpages Per Day! (2008-02-18)

The respected IT news website, The Register reports that every 14 seconds a web page is infected, which amounts to 6,000 infected web pages per day. Four out of five of these infections come from innocent companies and individuals who are oblivious to their site being hacked and subsequently used for hosting the malware of virus writers. The Register further reports that in the past viruses were spread using infected e-mail. Nowadays, however, the favoured virus distribution methods are downloads from compromised sites. As a result of these booby-trapped sites malware is present on at least one in every ten web pages.

WatchMouse's Periodic Vulnerability Scanning offers your website the flu jab against this virus pandemic. WatchMouse's Periodic Vulnerability Scanning is an affordable way to routinely check you company's security exposure and eliminate the risks of manual audits. Utilizing the most up-to-date database of known vulnerabilities, WatchMouse identifies any security risks and provides you with peace of mind that your software applications are being scanned from the perspective of a hacker, external to your organization.
To ensure your website and servers are checked for the latest issues WatchMouse's Periodic Vulnerability Scanning performs over 20,000 checks for known vulnerability and security exposures; using a database which is updated daily by multiple accredited organizations including CVE (funded by the US government) and Bugtraq. Following the detection of any severe issues, automated, real-time email, SMS and pager alerts give your business the chance to react quickly. Scans can be scheduled during low usage or maintenance hours and set at an intensity and frequency suited to your business needs and budget.

To obtain a free Periodic Vulnerability Scanning trial visit: www.watchmouse.com/vulnerability_scan_trial.php

The Register's article was published on 23.01.08 can be viewed at: www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/23/booby_trapped_web_botnet_menace/

Check Point VPN-1 UTM Edge Login Page Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability (2008-03-06)

Check Point VPN-1 UTM Edge is prone to a cross-site scripting vulnerability because it fails to adequately sanitize user-supplied input.

An attacker may leverage this issue to execute arbitrary script code in the browser of an unsuspecting user in the context of the affected site. This may help the attacker steal cookie-based authentication credentials and launch other attacks.

The issue affects Check Point VPN-1 UTM Edge firmware 7.0.48x.

WatchMouse: Recently added scans (2008-05-12)

The most recently added vulnerability checks and solutions for the WatchMouse Periodic Vulnerability Scan.

• 2008-05-11 - Sun Java System Web Server Search Module Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability (Medium)
• 2008-05-11 - MySQL Enterprise Server 5.0 < 5.0.60 MyISAM Table Privilege Check Bypass Vulnerability (Low)
• 2008-05-11 - MySQL 4.1 < 4.1.24 MyISAM Table Privilege Check Bypass Vulnerability (Low)
• 2008-05-11 - Realtek HD Audio Codec Drivers Multiple Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerabilities (High)
• 2008-05-11 - SAP MaxDB Multiple Vulnerabilities (Critical)

WatchMouse: Recently added scans (2008-04-09)

The most recently added vulnerability checks and solutions for the WatchMouse Periodic Vulnerability Scan.

• 2008-04-08 - SmarterMail Subject Field Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability (Medium)
• 2008-04-08 - McAfee Common Management Agent 3.6.0 Format String Vulnerability (registry check) (Medium)

Monitor your website with WatchMouse (2010-01-13)

Dashboard widget WatchMouse Site Monitor checks up on the website of your choice every 1, 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes to keep track of its uptime. But wait, there's more...

4 New APIs: Wine, Whois and Website Monitoring (2010-01-13)

WatchMouse API: The WatchMouse service checks the behavior and availability of websites. WatchMouse "allows site owners to optimize the internet experience of their customers. A worldwide network checks websites from 40 different locations in 25 countries around the globe."

WatchMouse 1.4.26 API deployed (2008-02-24)

Today, a minor release of the WatchMouse 1.4 API was deployed on http://api.watchmouse.com/1.4/. The current version is now 1.4.26. The changes are backward compatible with the previous version.

Changes w.r.t. 1.4.25

• self-documenting calls, add ?doc after the call, no other parameters and the parameter specification is shown (try and click the URL above!)
• new parameter 'acct' (account) on all rule, contact, and folder calls so
  1. resellers and other accounts with sub accounts can login with their own credentials and then access the sub-account
  2. accounts with read access rights to other accounts can access these accounts (graphs, logs)
• alternative output formats for logs (Excell, tab delimited, CSV, streaming)
• new calls added:
  • info_cps - get information on checkpoints (monitoring stations)
  • info_ip - get information about a given host (or about caller)
  • info_country (beta) - get information about a given country
  • info_currency (beta) - get information about a given currency
  • fldr_add/mod/get/del - manipulate rule folders
  • rule_check - check a rule now
  • ch_add/mod/get/del - manipulate contacts
  • acct_new/add - calls to create additional accounts
• version in XML output (first enclosing tag)
• no IP check on acct_whois call (used for auto login on WatchMouse site)
• use API password instead of account password if present (not supported on the WatchMouse site yet)
• full support for tags in rule_add/mod/get/del and rule_graph now
• support PNGs as error message for rule_graph so developper can always show a picture
• use ip geo information if applicable