The Register4Less.com Blog

On December 1^st, 2016, ICANN will require all accredited registrars significantly change how they handle domain ownership changes.  Briefly, it will no longer be possible to update the domain owner’s contact information by simply logging in to manage the domain and submit a new set of contact data.

Inter-Registrar Transfers

Currently, the only type of transfer of a domain that requires confirmation is the Inter Registrar transfer which is governed by ICANN’s Inter Registrar Transfer Policy.  The process of transferring a domain from one registrar to another will still follow the confirmation process with the domain’s current administrative contact.  The current contact must click a link sent to the contact in the current Whois record for the domain being transferred.  The admin contact must confirm the transfer with the current registrar, and may confirm the transfer away from the current registrar.

Inter-Registrant Transfers

New starting in December will be the process of confirming changes in the owner contact of a domain.  When there is a change in the owner contact’s first or last name, organization name, email or telephone number, a new confirmation process will be triggered.  The process is as follows:

• Register4Less (R4L) will first check if the domain name is eligible for a change in the owner’s contact.  If the domain is not, the contact update will not be saved and a message presented to the user stating why the domain cannot be updated at this time.
• R4L will send an email to the current owner contact requesting they (or their designated agent) approve the change.  If that email is not responded to favourably, the contact change is rejected.
• Once confirmed by the current owner contact, R4L will send an email to  the new owner contact requesting they (or again, their designated agent) approve the change.  Note, the previous and new owner contact may be the same address.  Both emails need to be confirmed in order for the update to complete.
• If / when both confirmations are positive, R4L will then send an email to both contacts confirming the update.

The R4L Team will post updates to this procedure as they develop.

Usually, for the weekly blog post we try to write about something informative, about a new service we’re rolling out, etc.  This past Wednesday, though, we had an interesting incident in our support team we’d like to share with you.

Mid afternoon, William Wakely, an relatively new customer for Register4Less, contacted our support via the secure online chat on our website.  He was reporting that overtime he logged our of his account, his password would get reset.  He was able to log back in by using the email that is sent with the Lost Password function.

Passwords of course will not reset themselves.  The only way for a password to get changed is for someone that is already logged in to go to the menu Profile > Change Password and submit a new password.  Once we were able to confirm William was the true domain owner, we asked him to check the Login Security Agent (LSA) page (also under Profile).

Sure enough, William was able to see there was another login session active from a different IP address.  William provided us with the IP address, and we were able to see this was coming from a different internet service provider from his, and not one that he recognized.

William had not yet setup the LSA kill password, so he did that while we were still on our chat session, and once set up, terminated the other person’s login session, and then reset his password.

We don’t actively track how frequently the LSA kill session function is used, though we could if we went through all of our log files.  It was however interesting and rewarding to be chatting with a customer and help them use this function live.  With any other registrar, the customer and true domain owner would not able been able to kick the other person off of their account, so resolving this problem would not have been easy.  LSA saved the integrity of William’s account!

New Softaculous Default Settings

If you’re using our cPanel based hosting, the R4L team has made a change to the default settings for the software installation program Softaculous.

When installing WordPress, automatically now a security plugin called WordFence will be installed.  We are also changing the default settings when installing WordPress so that WordPress itself, plugins and themes will automatically stay updated.

WordFence

With over 10.7 million downloads, WordFence is the most downloaded WordPress security plugin, and reputedly the best security plugin.  WordFence will help you scan your site for malware/hacks, and help clean the site if problems are detected.

Updating Your Settings

 Basic Options:

• Where to email alerts: — Enter in your email address

Click the Save Changes button before advancing to the advanced options.

Advanced Options:

 Alerts:

These will depend on how many sites you manage, and how many users you have using your site.  For high volume applications, leave only Alert when an IP address is blocked, Alert when someone is locked out from login, and Alert me when someone with administrator access signs in checked.

Firewall Rules:

• Check Immediately block fake Google crawlers.  It provides false traffic numbers.
• 404’s that exceed 2 per minute, choose throttle it
• How long is an IP address blocked when it breaks a rule, choose the maximum 1 month

 Login Security Options:

• Choose Force admins and publishers to use strong passwords
• Lock out after how many login failures, default is 5, recommend 2 or 3
• Lock out after how many forgot password attempts, default is 5, recommend 2
• Amount of time a user is locked out, set to 60 days
• Immediately block the IP of users who try to sign in as these usernames, set admin

Of course, your admin username must not be “admin”.  These settings help protect against brute force attacks

Domain security is in our opinion the most important service a registrar can provide for their clients.  The ramifications of an account being compromised are potentially huge.

Encrypted Passwords

Your password, whether it’s for domain management, and FTP password, or access to your email are stored encrypted.  We do keep the last 4 characters of the login password for account verification purposes.  Keeping passwords encrypted in our databases ensure only you (and those to whom you have chosen to share your password) will be able to log into your account with us.  No employee or service provider to register4less.com will ever be able to see your login password.

Login Security Agent

Our patented Login Security Agent provides 24/7 account monitoring, and is set up to notify you when a login session has been created on your account.  In addition to notifying you of a successful login to your account, the LSA service gives you the ability to terminate the login session.

LSA has been designed to deal with the one element of account security that we as a registrar cannot control, the human factor.  Ways in which an account could be compromised include:

• Leaving a login session active on computer
• Logging into your account on a public terminal that’s infected with malware
• Sending an email in plaint text with the account information in the body of the email
• Leaving login credentials written down, etc.

When you set up LSA on your account, you will specify LSA to send a notification when logging in from a connection on any IP address, or you can specify an IP to be ignored.  You will create a “kill password” with the account as well.  This kill password cannot be changed, so you want to ensure it’s one that you will remember.

Let’s go with the scenario that someone malicious has gained your login username and password, and is logging into your account in order to steal your domains.  As soon as this person logs into your account, you will receive a notice that a login session has been created, and from what IP address the person is connecting.  You will recognize that this is not you logging in.

To kick the hacker off, log into your account, and go to Profile > Login Security Agent.  You’ll enter in the Kill Password, and then click the Kill Sessions button.  The next link the hacker will click will log them off the account.  The login password is automatically reset by LSA when you click the Kill Sessions button.  You’ll then need to change your password to a new one, and your account is now once again secure.

Two Factor Authentication

Two Factor Authentication combines the Google Authenticator app for your smartphone and your normal login password password.  The app will generate a 6 digit number that’s unique to the app that’s running on your phone.  When you log in, you will enter in the 6 digit code after your password (no spaces).

Part 2

Hide the Username from the Author Archive URL

Or better yet, don’t make public posts from your admin account at all.  If your admin name is published with posts or comments that you make on your site, this will be visible to hackers as well.  This is like having your admin username be “admin”.

Another way an attacker can potentially gain access to your username is via the author archive pages on your site.

By default WordPress will create an author archive under the URL http://yoursite.com/author/myblogs, using your username myblogs.  This is essentially the same security hole as described in last weeks post having the admin username be “admin”.

This is less than ideal, for the same reasons explained above for the “admin” username, so it’s a good idea to hide this by changing the user_nicename entry in your database, as described here.

Disable file editing via the dashboard

In a default WordPress installation, you can go to Appearance > Editor and edit any of your theme files in the dashboard.  If a hacker has cracked your WordPress login, they will have access to these files, and upload whatever files or scripts that they wish.

To disable this method of file editing, add the following to your wp-config.php file:

define( ‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’, true );

Use a Security Plugin

As well as all of the measures above, there are many plugins you can use to strengthen your site’s security and reduce the chance of being hacked.

Here are a handful of popular options:

• http://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/ – offers a wide range of security features.
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/bulletproof-security/ – protects your site via .htaccess.
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall/ – adds a firewall to your site.
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-scanner/ – scans your site for malware etc.
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/ – full-featured security plugin.
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/websitedefender-wordpress-security/ – comprehensive security tool.
• http://wordpress.org/plugins/exploit-scanner/ – searches your database for any suspicious code.

Change the wp_ Table Prefix

By default, each table in the WordPress database begins with wp_. Just like the other default features already mentioned, if you leave it as is, it makes it easier for hackers to infiltrate your site and database tables since the table names are the same across most WordPress installs.

Changing this to something more customized and memorable to you means it will be less accessible to hackers.

There are many plugins that can change the table prefix to something else you choose and here are some of the most popular ones:

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/secure-wordpress-change-table-prefix-after-installation

Check Your File Permissions

If you’re hosting your site on a Linux or Unix server (all of our servers are Linux), files have permissions for owners, groups, and all users.  Permissions are grated for files to be readable, writable and executable.  If your file permissions on important files and directories are too open, almost anyone could have access to these files on the server.

The WordPress Codex has a great guide that explains file permissions in-depth.

Limit Access to Important Pages

Your admin dashboard and login page are among the most important pages since they can grant access to your entire site. Limiting access to these pages means you and your users will be the only ones that will be able to access your site, keep you all a little safer.

Click here to learn how you can limit access to a specific IP address.

Part 1 of 2.

More and more of our customers are opting to use WordPress to build and maintain their websites.  WordPress is an excellent Content Management System (CMS), and now is used for approximately 20% of websites out there.

With WordPress being so popular, it has become a target platform for hackers and spammers to attack WordPress sites.  The platform is mature and secure, however there are steps every developer should take to help protect their websites from these people.  Some are just common sense, and some involve adding additional plugins to your website.

While the following recommendations will largely apply to any CMS platform like Joomla & Drupal, in our examples here, we’ll be focussing on the Web’s number one CMS platform, WordPress. (more…)

You may have notice that the chat system on Register4Less.com’s website is different.   You’ll see the image on the right on the bottom right of your screen.   Our previous chat application was only available to visitors of our website when they were not logged in.   Our team is extending the availability of chat hours to the following:

• Weekdays: 8:30 – 20:00
• Weekends: 10:30 – 20:00

On Mobile devices, the chat icon will look like the green bubble image you see on the right.   The chat application works on all operating systems, tablets & smart phones, not only for you, but from our end as well.  This gives our staff the ability to answer a chat and help a customer even if away from the office.

There are a number of new features that this chat system provides that allows our support team to provide even better customer support for you when you connect with us online.   The chat system opens up new possibilities with new features such as:

• Our support agent can see what you are typing as you type, allowing us to respond more quickly.
• The app keeps a history of chats, so if we need to go back to something from a previous session, that’s possible
• Under Options, you can upload a file (show us a screen shot of the problem you’re having for example), email or print a transcript of your can’t, etc.
• The chat from our end is not only web based.  Their are native apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android

The team here at R4L always tries to do our best to provide you with the best possible customer service, and we’re all very excited about this new tool that will help extend our hours of support, and provide you with a better customer service experience.

As an ICANN accredited registrar, we take the security on your account very seriously. The measures we take include

• Having any page where sensitive information you provide is SSL encrypted and behind a login session.
• Optional two factor authentication, where an app on your smart phone or tablet provides 6 digit code you add to your regular password. A new code is generated every thirty seconds.
• A strength indicator rates your password when you create or update a new password on our system.

(more…)

TFA – Two Factor Authentication

The development team at R4L has added a new security feature for account login called Two Factor Authentication (TFA).  Once configured, TFA will automatically generate a new 6 digit code every 30 seconds, and this is required with your current login password in order to access your account.

(more…)