[M5Hosting] Planned Upgrade and much more - 6/20/04

[Michael J McCafferty]

Dear Happy M5 Customer,

UPGRADE:
         This evening, after 9:00pm we will be installing a new bridging 
firewall. Bridging firewalls are also sometimes called "transparent" or 
"in-line" firewalls. This will allow M5 Hosting to filter unwanted traffic 
at the border of our network, before it reaches any of our servers. All our 
servers are already hardened and equipped with host-based firewalls, and 
this new addition to the network will serve to improve and simplify 
security, improve logging and statistics collection, and simplify network 
troubleshooting.  For the curious, the benefits of a Bridging Firewall over 
a Routing Firewall are explained in this 
article:  http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1737

         One of the benefits of this addition will be that we will now 
offer shared firewall services to our colocation customers.  This is a 
benefit that is not offered at most colocation providers, and only at 
significant extra charge at those that do.  Extra charges often range from 
$100/mo. to $225/mo or more for this optional service at other colocation 
providers, however current colocation customers will benefit at no extra 
charge at least through the end of your current contract.

         The duration of any loss of connectivity during this addition to 
our network will be kept under 15 minutes.


NOTICE:
         Some customers have noticed some unusual and pornographic natured 
"referrers" in their Webalizer statistics. This is an attempt by the same 
kind of low-life that send e-mail spam by the millions to artificially 
create links to their own web sites. The motivation is to increase their 
rank in search engines, and to get you to check them out to "see what new 
site is linking to me". While this method of spam is not new, it's on the 
rise. This spam is called "Referrer Spam".
         We have created a web page with information for webmasters on how 
to prevent this kind of spam. We are even working with developer who has 
created the first version of a script which will help identify Referrer 
Spam. We have already identified several perpetrators, and have blocked 
them from accessing any site hosted with M5 Hosting. Our "Referrer Spam" 
information web page may be visited 
here:  http://www.m5computersecurity.com/referrerspam/
         If you notice this kind of unwanted spam in your Webalizer 
statistics, just drop us an e-mail at support[at]m5hosting.com to report 
it, and we will block the offending spammer at the new firewall.


SUPPORT:
         Any support request or question can now be sent to 
support[at]m5hosting.com. We have a new trouble ticket and issue tracking 
system which will help us help you more quickly and accurately. Coming 
soon: A web-based interface to track your open trouble tickets.

NOTE:
         E-mail addresses above are intentionally obscured by replacing the 
'@' with '[at]'. This is to prevent e-mail spam. When sending e-mail to us, 
replace the '[at]' with the usual '@'. These periodic e-mails are now 
archived on the web at http://www.m5hosting.com/pipermail/m5hosting/  and 
un-obscured e-mail addresses are often harvested from web pages.

We greatly appreciate your business and your referrals !

Thank you,
Mike


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Michael J. McCafferty
Principal, Security Engineer
M5 Hosting
858-576-7325 Voice
http://www.m5hosting.com
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