Learn how to harden the SSL Configuration of Nginx.
“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.” ― Gautama Buddha
In previous articles, we discussed how to create a CSR to obtain an SSL certificate, as well as how to configure Nginx web server with that certificate. Let us now discuss improving the configuration of Nginx for better security.
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Learn how to properly configure your Nginx web server for HTTPS.
“How did it get so late so soon?” ― Dr. Seuss
Nginx is a fast-growing web server which is known for its small size and speed. According to the Netcraft February 2018 Web Server Survey, nginx held a 25.92% of the total web server market share. If you need to host a web server, you would do very well with using Nginx.
Continue reading “Setting up Nginx Web Server with an SSL Certificate”
Configure Apache to enable SSL with an SSL Certificate
“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ― William Faulkner
The Apache Web Server is the most popular web server software. According to the January 2018 Web Server Survey, about 38.2% of domains were running the Apache Web Server. As for active sites, Apache held about 44% share followed by NGINX at 21%.
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Enhance the security of your website with an SSL certificate.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” ― Isaac Asimov
Do you currently run a web server? If so, you need to support HTTPS by adding an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate to your server. Not only is it good for the security of your customers, it is also good for your website’s positioning in Google (SEO).
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Collection of Checks for Readable and Writable Files.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” ― Nelson Mandela
It can be a bit cumbersome at times to check for read or write permission on a file. The check might succeed but the actual operation could fail. Also, quite a few edge cases need to be covered to get a reasonable answer from such a check. In this article, we cover some issues with regards to checking read and write permission on a file.
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Easily incorporate strong AES encryption into your programs.
“Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Pycrypto is a python module that provides cryptographic services. Pycrypto is somewhat similar to JCE (Java Cryptography Extension) for Java. In our experience JCE is more extensive and complete, and the documentation for JCE is also more complete. That being said, pycrypto is a pretty good module covering many aspects of cryptography.
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Make your life easier with these itertools when dealing with iterables
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” ― Anonymous
Python provides the itertools package which provides convenience functions for many common iterator operations. We have covered count(), cycle() and chain() in the first part of this series, and compress(), dropwhile(), and groupby() in the second part. In this article, we present a few examples of ifilter(), islice(), imap() and izip().
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More on downloading HTTP URLs using urllib2.
“I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.” ― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
Python provides the well-regarded urllib2 module for opening URLs. Let us investigate some of the capabilities of this module, shall we? Note that most use cases are better served by using the higher level Requests module. However, you should know about the available options.
Learn about all the facilities available with python string formatting
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ― Isaac Asimov
String formatting in python is somewhat complicated by the fact that there are a lot of flags and options. Let us learn about them.
Remove items from a List and more.
“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting some on yourself.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
In a previous article, we covered some python list methods related to adding items. Let us now continue the review of more list methods.
