External Security Monitor

Did you know? Hackers probe your servers for vulnerabilities between 5 and 170 times per week (2007-10-29)

Test your site now: Free 10 day / 10 scan trial

With a dramatic rise in malicious attacks, it is now critical to test your websites and servers for security vulnerabilities. Having the latest firewalls and Intrusion Detection Systems will not protect your organization if they (or the services behind it) are not kept up-to-date and configured correctly.

This means that verifying the security of your systems is not something you can do just once, nor should you check this just every now-and-then. New vulnerabilities are identified every day, exploits become available soon after it, and every change in your systems' configurations, however small, may open up new vulnerabilities. Having audited last week does not imply your systems are fine today!

The WatchMouse Periodic Vulnerability Scan is an affordable way to routinely check your company’s security exposure. Utilizing the most up-to-date database of known vulnerabilities, WatchMouse’s identifies any security external security monitor and provides you with the peace-of-mind that your web applications are being scrutinized from the perspective of a possible attacker.

Characteristics

WatchMouse offers Periodic Vulnerability Scanning with an outside - hacker's - view, with the following characteristics:

• Currently over 20,000 vulnerabilities are checked. Checks for new vulnerabilities are added on a daily basis.
• The frequency and the intensity of a scan can be tailored to your policies, and implemented immediately on our self-service website.
• Severe vulnerabilities can, depending on your preferences, initiate SMS (text) or paging alerts, giving you, or your webmasters, the opportunity to react quickly in case of new vulnerabilities.
• Extensive reporting is available for each scan, including pointers on how to fix vulnerabilities.
• WatchMouse's unique Vulnerability Scan Customer Console allows you to manage subsequent scans by inspecting differential reports and open issues, declaring vulnerabilities fixed, adding operator comments, etc.

Try now: Free 10 day trial!

A Boy Joins the Mouse! - Bringing transaction monitoring to your site (2008-04-02)

Now you can test transactional behavior of web applications using WatchMouse's global infrastructure.

WatchMouse is pleased to announce a partnership with Badboy Software which brings you exciting new functionality.

The Badboy tool is designed to help you test, develop and build web based applications. The powerful tool aids in the testing and development of complex dynamic applications and contains dozens of features including a simple yet comprehensive capture/replay interface, load testing support, detailed reports, graphs etc.

Now, via a partnership with Badboy Software, you can professionally record complex web transaction scripts and then automatically and external security monitorally run them from WatchMouse's global infrastructure of 25+ checkpoints. Having run the Badboy script, you'll receive detailed information about the end-to-end behaviour of your web applications. This new functionality enables you to monitor these transactions on your site and know how your customers experience them when they access your site from locations all around the world.

To find out more about this new functionality and sign up for a free trial visit: Web application scripting.

Happy testing!

Mark Pors
CTO

BadBoy Software updates scripting recorder to improve WatchMouse's Functional testing service (2009-01-07)

The WatchMouse Functional testing service allows you to define multi-step tests through a website and replay them external security monitorally from the WatchMouse monitoring stations. This goes beyond just monitoring site performance and uptime, it allows you to verify that your web applications and back end systems really work.
More information on this service can be found on the Transaction Monitoring & Web Application Testing page.

In a co-operation with BadBoy software, who provide a tailored version of their recoder software which allows you to upload the resulting script directly into your WatchMouse dashboard.

Feedback from our "Functional testing" customers has lead to several essential improvements to the BadBoy recorder. This improved version has now been released and we recommend all our customers to upgrade to this version.
The new - WatchMouse specific - version can be downloaded here: http://www.badboy.com.au/versions/BadboyInstaller-2.0-latest_wm.exe

The most important changes are:

CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.7

   #1097: Multipart Forms Incorrectly export Parameters to JMeter Encoded causing Double Encoding

   #1087: Use Follow-Redirect Option in JMeter for More Reliable Export Playback

   #1086: Export Referer and Other Default Headers to JMeter

   #1085: Assertions placed as Children of Requests not Exported to JMeter

CHANGES IN BADBOY 2.0.6.1

   #1075: Security Update (MS08-052 - Critical)

The full release notes can be found here: http://badboy.com.au/versions/ReleaseNotes-2.0.7.txt

Rapidly growing WatchMouse wins Deloitte’s Rising Star award (2005-09-23)

WatchMouse is one of the three winners of Deloitte’s Rising Star award. This award is presented annually to rapidly expanding technology companies less than five years old. WatchMouse has been active worldwide for three years in the area of site and server monitoring. With 16 monitoring stations throughout the world, WatchMouse monitors the availability of customers’ websites, immediately sounding the alarm in the event of problems.

The Rising Stars are presented as part of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 ceremony, the fifty most rapidly expanding technology businesses. The Rising Stars have the potential to lead the Technology Fast 50 in the near future. Stan van de Burgt (42), Niels Eijsbroek (40) and Mark Pors (38) first came up with the idea for WatchMouse in 2001. The concept was as unique as it was clear: to monitor the availability of sites and servers by constantly simulating web traffic. If a site is not responding or an error is found, the customer is notified immediately by SMS, pager, IM or e-mail. From the moment the concept went 'live', in 2002, the pace has been frenetic: turnover doubled each year. Web sites are now monitored from sixteen monitoring stations worldwide 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The WatchMouse application is entirely web-based: customers do not have to install software or hardware at their site, and the application excels in its self-service aspects while staying easy to use. This allows WatchMouse to operate with a small core of permanent employees, supplemented by external support. Prospective customers can specify their requirements in detail on the WatchMouse site. A range of starter packages is available, priced from € 17.50 per month up to € 450 per month. 400 paying customers in 40 countries worldwide now make use of WatchMouse’s services. These include hosting companies, government bodies, and companies such as LB Icon, Scania, Siemens, Orange, ING, GeoTrust, Citibank, and Postbank.

Self-service as a success factor

Mark Pors, Chief Technology Officer, says he was “pleasantly surprised by the award”. “I am very happy that the jury shares our vision of self-service and our market approach." Pors sees WatchMouse as “the right initiative at the right moment. Companies are increasingly looking to outsource non-core tasks. However, they want to be able to guide and control this themselves and from their own workplace. Web-based services make this possible." Stan van de Burgt, CEO, sees the simplicity of the WatchMouse site and the various languages in which it is available as the major success factors. "Monitoring websites was an idea that already existed in essence, but had not been worked out in this form. We are geared tightly to 'self service', whereby customers can set up everything themselves and retain total control. Which also means we are able to offer the service at a more attractive price than other players in the market.”

The Rising Star awards were presented on Thursday, 22 September.

WatchMouse

WatchMouse assesses your website and e-commerce applications just like your customers experience them. The checks are carried out from 16 monitoring stations worldwide, and recorded in regular reports. In the event of errors or availability problems, the right people within your organisation will be alerted.

www.watchmouse.com

Very impressive feature set and has a real commitment to client care (2010-01-13)

With many hundreds of business clients who expect and deserve over 99.99% uptime, in the instances where we do have service external security monitor, WatchMouse alerts us promptly - every time. This allows us to minimize the impact of downtime and interruptions to our clients. WatchMouse isn't just another monitoring service, the team is dedicated to building on an already very impressive feature set and has a real commitment to client care

Michael Bloch, Business Operations Manager, ThinkHost, Inc.

WatchMouse's Website Performance Benchmark enables us... (2010-01-13)

WatchMouse's Website Performance Benchmark enables us to confirm on behalf of our clients, any suspected access external security monitor in addition to showing the overall performance compared to the benchmark in our client's sector.

Managing Director, Red Dog Communications

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 wexternal security monitor 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 external security monitor 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.

Website performance is the key to customer satisfaction (2007-06-27)

How often have you typed in the Google URL and received a page that will not load? I am willing to bet that this is a rare occurrence. Despite its busy traffic, Google is a textbook example of a web site that has almost perfect performance and therefore serves a great number of satisfied customers. The market share of the search engine is a resounding confirmation of this. You are assisted quickly, so you come back sooner. Research conducted by JupiterResearch has revealed that visitors to a site only have 4 seconds of patience. If the site has not been loaded by that time, they leave. Error messages also prompt potential customers to go to the competition.

Why do organisations still devote so little attention to the effective availability of their site? Performance is the key to satisfied customers. For many companies, their web site is the face of the organisation. Consumers and also business users of the Internet use the wealth of information on the web to compare purchasing options. It is of immeasurable importance that they are also actually able to find what they are looking for. If this is not possible at one company, competitors are straining at the leash to offer their services through a correctly functioning site.

Coming back to the praise that we had for Google, we see that the search engine has made significant investments in the availability of its web site. The page is run by several machines at various sites. If one crashes there are enough back-up servers that can take over the traffic flows to guarantee optimum performance. In addition, the search machine invests a great deal of time and money in the right hardware and people. Although the site has a difficult task – searching through an index of billions of documents – it is almost always available and loads fast.

The actual site is unspectacular in construction. This applies to the majority of sites with a high level of availability. Simple sites such as the news site NU.nl are almost always easy to access. Nevertheless, it is not only the layout of the site that determines how the web page performs. Too many photos, long symbols and frills make web sites slower to respond. The fact that the ‘back end’ of the site is not efficiently programmed also contributes to longer loading times. Frequent consultation of background databases is also detrimental to the speed of the page.

Where it often goes wrong is when different people are working on a site, thereby disturbing the links between the various elements. The different parts of the site will work correctly, but the site as a wexternal security monitor will fail to perform. This means long waiting times for people who want to use the services of a company.

Service providers at the upper end of the market are becoming increasingly aware of this. The contracts that they use frequently include a service level agreement (SLA) for the part for which they are responsible. Nevertheless, they regularly make mistakes due to the fact that the promised performance is not subsequently verified (by an independent party). Although it is now essentially part of the contract, there is insufficient actual verification. Ideally, web site performance should become a permanent component of a contract. In addition, clear internal agreements must be made on who has final responsibility for the efficient loading and availability of a site.

Regular testing is also essential for the facilitation of good availability. This will prevent a great deal of errors, keeping the site up and running at crucial times. The storm that blew over the Netherlands at the end of January was a good opportunity to see which sites were prepared for extreme loads and which were not. The site of the Dutch weather institute, KNMI, was almost unreachable, while some logical thought could have protected them from this eventuality. If you know that a major storm is heading towards the country you can be sure that people will search for information on the weather and roads on the Internet. Sites such as those of KLM and Schiphol were also unreachable, while the specially created site Crisis.nl, which had been kept as simple as possible, was able to serve a large number of people.

Including ‘stress tests’ in a SLA or conducting them regularly in-house is therefore to be recommended. Companies can easily take control by ensuring that their service provider executes this type of test or by putting their own site under pressure. This is the best method of checking whether your web site can handle a sudden increase in visitor numbers. It is also good to know whether the servers on which your site is running actually ensure that your page is always available and loads correctly. For companies, it is crucial to see when they are off air. This can save them a large amount of money every year and will also reduce the number of irritated visitors to the site. This is how you keep customers satisfied and keep the company running.

Mark Pors
Chief Technology Officer at WatchMouse

WatchMouse provides site performance monitoring and stress test services

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 external security monitor and eliminate the external security monitor of manual audits. Utilizing the most up-to-date database of known vulnerabilities, WatchMouse identifies any security external security monitor 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 external security monitors; 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/

RaidenHTTPD Cross Site Scripting and Local File Include Vulnerabilities (2009-07-24)

RaidenHTTPD is prone to local file-include and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities because the application fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input. These issues affect the WebAdmin component.

An attacker may leverage the cross-site scripting issue to execute arbitrary script code in the browser of an unsuspecting user in the context of the affected site. This may allow the attacker to steal cookie-based authentication credentials and to launch other external external security monitor monitor.

Exploiting the local file-include issue allows remote attackers to view and subsequently execute local files within the context of the webserver process.

RaidenHTTPD 2.0 build 26 and prior versions are affected.

8E6 R3000 Internet Filter Multiple Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerabilities (2007-05-29)

The 8E6 R3000 Internet Filter appliance is prone to multiple cross-site scripting vulnerabilities because it fails to properly sanitize user-supplied input.

An attacker may leverage these issue to execute arbitrary script code in the browser of an unsuspecting user in the context of the affected device. This may help the attacker steal cookie-based authentication credentials and launch other external external security monitor monitor.

Specific information on affected firmware and model number is currently unavailable. This BID will be updated as more information emerges.

Ignite Realtime Openfire Unspecified Privilege Escalation Vulnerability (2007-05-29)

Openfire is prone to an unspecified privilege-escalation vulnerability.

An attacker can exploit this issue to obtain escalated privileges. A successful attack can result in a compromise in the context of the affected application.

Openfire 3.3.0 and prior are external external security monitor monitor to this issue.

Apple Releases a Security Update for QuickTime 7.1.6 to Address Multiple Vulnerabilities (2007-05-29)

Apple has released a Security Update for QuickTime 7.1.6 to address multiple vulnerabilities in Apple QuickTime for Java. The impacts of these vulnerabilities include arbitrary code execution and information disclosure.

US-CERT recommends users install the QuickTime 7.1.6 Security Update and follow the Securing Your Web Browser document to disable Java.

US-CERT will continue to investigate these vulnerabilities and provide additional information as it becomes available.

GraphicsMagick PALM DCM Buffer Overflow Vulnerabilities (2007-01-08)

GraphicsMagick is prone to multiple buffer-overflow vulnerabilities because it fails to perform adequate boundary checks on user-supplied data before copying it to insufficiently sized buffers.

Successful exploits may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary machine code to compromise an affected computer or to cause denial-of-service conditions.

GraphicsMagick 1.1.7 and prior versions are external external security monitor monitor.