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askapache

Profile picture of askapache
  • Member Since: March 26th, 2008
  • Ghosting in the machine
  • www.askapache.com
  • Senior Systems Architect at ;p

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Bio/Description

Real old-school hacker, Linux/BSD Guru, PHP, Perl, Bash, JS, and especially Apache and Apache Htaccess – http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html

Goal is to become a Super Class “A” wizard-class programmer.

http://google.com/+askapache

Interests

Hacking for the hack value. Learning. Improving. Free Software. Servers (windows is NO server, barely an OS). GNU, Arch Linux, OpenBSD, Network Protocols, Page Speed, making code efficient and faster than fast. Space and Astronomy, Reading source code, Bash, JavaScript, Python, PHP, securitynow podcast, terminal multiplexers, SSH, tmux, shells. Any books on computing/hacking/or the history thereof.

http://www.askapache.com/about/

WordPress Origin Story

I discovered these htaccess tips and tricks (http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/htaccess.html) mostly while working as a network security penetration specialist hired to find security holes in web hosting environments around 2002. Shared hosting is the most common and cheapest form of web-hosting where multiple customers are placed on a single machine and “share” the resources (CPU/RAM/SPACE). The machines are configured to basically ONLY do HTTP and FTP. No shells or any interactive logins, no ssh, just FTP access. That is when I started examining htaccess files in great detail and learned about the incredible untapped power of htaccess. For 99% of the worlds best Apache admins, they don’t use .htaccess much, if AT ALL. It’s much easier, safer, and faster to configure Apache using the httpd.conf file instead. However, this file is almost never readable on shared-hosts, and I’ve never seen it writable. So the only avenue left for those on shared-hosting was and is the .htaccess file, and holy freaking fiber-optics.. it’s almost as powerful as httpd.conf itself!

Once I discovered what .htaccess files could do towards helping me enumerate and exploit security vulnerabilities even on big shared-hosts I focused all my research into .htaccess files, meaning I was reading the venerable Apache HTTP Source code 24/7! I lovingly custom compiled every released version of the Apache Web Server, ever, even the original NCSA versions, and focused on enumerating the most powerful htaccess directives. Good times!

Because my focus was on protocol/file/network vulnerabilites instead of web dev I built up a nice toolbox of htaccess tricks to do unusual things. When I switched over to webdev in 2005 I started using htaccess to improve websites instead of hacking servers. I documented most of my favorites and rewrote the htaccess guide for web developers. After some great encouragement on various BBS’s, forums and underground nets I decided to start a blog to share my work with everyone and see if there was any response. AskApache.com was registered and quickly rose to one of the top 20k most visited sites in the world (Alexa). I published my guide without holding much back (power to the people is how I roll), and it was quickly plagiarized and scraped all over the net. Today it has been reprocessed and plagiarized by so many so many times that most all of the htaccess articles and htaccess snippets out there in the wild today contain recognizable pieces of the original.

As a hacker and a free and proud citizen of the greatest country in the history of this planet, I believe that Information is freedom, and that freedom is information, but there can be neither without free access.. so askapache.com has the least restrictive copyright I could find. Anyone can copy, sell, republish, modify, diss, plagiarize, repurpose, use, etc., anything on my site! That’s the net I grew up with and love, and I’ll never be able to pay back what I gained from the generosity and truly remarkable genius of those that came before me and those who fight to keep it that way for future hackers (FSF.org, GNU, EFF).

That was in 2006 and the askapache.com site was launched running an early version of WordPress. And even then, as now, my passion has been to read source code, and even in that early version of WP I could recognize that it was something special, something that would survive. Initially I chose WordPress to familiarize myself with it as a blogging platform, back then so many other competitors and alternatives existed and for my job in the elite world of pen-testing I had to be familiar with as many possible. That’s about the time the term “blogging” became super hot, and have no doubt that I was also sampling a lot of other competing software, which continued until about 2010, when I finally decided WP was the uncontested champ, most especially because of how it is all about future-proofing and leverage through minimalism and power.

  • Committed [1043319] to Plugins Trac:
    add icon to legacy path

    3 months ago

  • Committed [1043317] to Plugins Trac:
    Add aa_BGLABEL default for old js.

    3 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Pathetic plugin. waste of time", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    5.0.2 fixes the issues with the previous versions. What exactly did you dislike?

    3 months ago

  • Committed [1043315] to Plugins Trac:
    Plugin Settings getting wiped-out on activation/deactivation now FIXED!

    3 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "can't make it work", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    It should certainly work on hostgator, actually the latest update was built and tested on…

    4 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Could not access my own site and admin after running P3", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Thanks to the developer for such excellent feedback. I would make an educated guess and…

    4 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Asks for password twice", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    This happens when it's redirected. So if you goto http://x.com/wp-login.php and it redirects you to…

    4 months ago

  • Closed ticket #11175, in Core Trac:
    wp_check_invalid_utf8() should drop invalid utf-8 chars only instead of ...

    4 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Site all broken (no css?) on MOBILE, help!", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Yeah it appears your htaccess file has malware in it.

    5 months ago

  • Committed [996438] to Plugins Trac:
    Patch server-env.cgi for http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q3/650

    5 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "wp-login.php not really protected - bug", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Done. Future version will give more control over this, and test for it, since it…

    5 months ago

  • Committed [995778] to Plugins Trac:
    https://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-loginphp-not-really-protected-bug

    5 months ago

  • Committed [995775] to Plugins Trac:
    Bug fixes in preparation for upcoming 4.7

    5 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Plugin not working", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Please upgrade to the latest version. Also, what are you trying to do with a…

    5 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Bug ? Settings lost if plugin is disabled then re-enabled", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Ya photoM it's a 1-off procedure, from now on you can upgrade every time a…

    5 months ago

  • Committed [994001] to Plugins Trac:
    Upgrade Bug Fixes.. New debugging for big future releases.

    5 months ago

  • Created a new ticket, #29717, in Core Trac:
    wp_check_invalid_utf8 - pcre tricks and failsafes, +mb_convert_encoding, ...

    5 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Bug ? Settings lost if plugin is disabled then re-enabled", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    There ya go, fixed in 5.0.0. Please try it out and let me know of…

    5 months ago

  • Committed [991822] to Plugins Trac:
    Major Update to 5.0.0

    5 months ago

  • Committed [991821] to Plugins Trac:
    Major Update to 5.0.0

    5 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Bug ? Settings lost if plugin is disabled then re-enabled", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Fixing now...

    5 months ago

  • Committed [986699] to Plugins Trac:
    3.1 Update for WP 4.0 - misc bug fixes - improvements

    6 months ago

  • Wrote a comment on the post Introducing plugin icons in the plugin installer, on the site Make WordPress Core:
    This is really helpful Nacin, thanks!

    6 months ago

  • Created a topic, BEST Enterprise-Level High-Perf Caching Plugin Ever, on the site WordPress Support Forums

    7 months ago

  • Created a topic, Best in class, on the site WordPress Support Forums

    8 months ago

  • Wrote a comment on the post Dashicons in WordPress 3.9, on the site Make WordPress Core:
    This is a really great feature! I just wish there were 10x more icons, why…

    8 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "No errors, but no output either", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Thanks Jan. Hey try the new version and see if that fixes the problem.

    11 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "AskApache Debug problem", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Hmm. Very strange, I just released a major update with many new modules, and added…

    11 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "Never got it working before.", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Works now, and is much faster.

    11 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "AskApache asks for password on my main site", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Install Firefox firebug extension or use chrome developer tools. Then clear your browser cache and…

    11 months ago

  • Posted a reply to "AA PassPro/Better WordPress Security conflict", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Fixed.

    1 year ago

  • Posted a reply to "AA PassPro/Better WordPress Security conflict", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Look for an update within 2 weeks.

    1 year ago

  • Posted a reply to "AA PassPro/Better WordPress Security conflict", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Thanks for reporting this in such detail. I will fix this in the next version,…

    1 year ago

  • Posted a reply to "WordPress debugging with awesome bit", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    The ultimate goal and ultimate compliment. Thank you!

    1 year ago

  • Created a topic, A real improvement, great plugin, on the site WordPress Support Forums

    2 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "Can I Safely Uninstall Ask Apache Password Protect Plugin", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    WARNING: If you lock YOURSELF out of your site: DO NOT JUST DELETE PLUGIN. This…

    2 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "500 Server Error", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    There is also a SID in the plugin named rewrite loop to prevent redirect loops.

    2 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "500 Server Error", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Good description and question, here's what I'd suggest. 1 Remove all askapache lines and/or .htaccess/.htpasswd…

    2 years ago

  • Created a topic, Best non-SQL Debugging Info, on the site WordPress Support Forums

    2 years ago

  • Created a new ticket, #23032, in Core Trac:
    Call get_page_hierarchy without passing by reference in ...

    2 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Google 404] CSS - HTML - JS will not load", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Wow, I am really sorry about this.. fixed in 4.8.3

    3 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Google 404] It displays "y" in the CSS, JS and HTML editor...", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Fixed in version 4.2.8.5 The problem was #2, bad code on my part that was…

    3 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Google 404] It displays "y" in the CSS, JS and HTML editor...", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    I just noticed this today too... I bet it is being caused by 1 of…

    3 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache] HELP!!! 404 Errors on all pages", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    There are only 2 files that this plugin modifies. It doesn't even access your database,…

    4 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Password Protect] all is correctly installed but prompt with password isn't ", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Does your AuthDigestDomain include / or wp-login.php? I changed the current version to not be…

    4 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Password Protect] all is correctly installed but prompt with password isn't ", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Your blogroot .htaccess file should have something similar to: <Files wp-login.php> Satisfy Any AuthType Digest…

    4 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Google 404] Cannot redeclare set_current_screen()", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    I have no idea what is wrong tervan.. I am debugging it as much as…

    4 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Google 404] Cannot redeclare set_current_screen()", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Wow big mistake on my part, sorry about that! Got a little anxious to get…

    4 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "[Plugin: AskApache Google 404] Broken Reference to Code Press", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    Ok I just uploaded a new version, pretty drastic code differences (for the admin side…

    5 years ago

  • Posted a reply to "AskApache keeps asking user for username and pass when logging out", on the site WordPress Support Forums:
    or it could just be that you haven't read the docs which explain how the…

    5 years ago

  • AskApache Google 404

    79,639 downloads

  • AskApache Password Protect

    117,214 downloads

  • AskApache Debug Viewer

    9,189 downloads

  • P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)

    User rating

  • WP Super Cache

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  • AskApache Google 404

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  • AskApache Password Protect

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  • AskApache Debug Viewer

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