Plesk MTAs – the Qmail and Postfix Mail Transfer Agents / SMTP mail servers

Plesk usually uses either Postfix (new versions) or Qmail (old ones). To find out which one you’re currently using, run the following command via SSH: # /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/mailmng –features | grep SMTP_Server A QUICK COMMANDS GUIDE FOR POSTFIX Show the email messages in Queue: # postqueue -p | tail -n 1 | cut -d’ ‘ -f5 List […]

PHP mail() function simple test script

This is a simple script you can use to test the functionality of the php mail() function on your server: ?php $to = “your@emailaddress.here“; // <– replace with your address here $subject = “Test mail”; $message = “Hello! This is a simple test email message.”; $from = “sender@emailaddress.here“; $headers = “From:” . $from; mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers); echo […]

How to patch/disable SSL 3.0 and fix POODLE vulnerability

SSL 3.0 is an old protocol for securing connections over the internet, its successors currently used are TLS 1.1  and TLS 1.2. However, for compatibility reasons, most servers still support SSL 3.0 and default back to it if a connection via TLS cannot be established. To disable SSL 3.0 and thus protect yourself from POODLE, you […]

cPanel – Cron Jobs/Scheduled tasks

Cpanel -> Advanced->Cron Jobs-> As an example for using this feature, we will run a php script (test.php) which sends an e-mail to a predefined e-mail address. In the command line enter: /usr/bin/php -q /home/cpanelusername/public_html/test.php As per the above settings, the command to run the test.php script will be executed every five minutes. Make sure […]

OpenSSL Heartbleed bug – a quick explanation on the recent security issue and the fix

Heartbleed is a recently discovered small bug that relates to the OpenSSL’s implementation of the TLS ‘heartbeat’ mechanism. The bug is present only in the OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f! By exploiting this bug, an attacker can request that a running TLS server hand over a relatively large slice (up to 64KB) of its private […]