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HowTo: Mod_Security Installation on Linux/Plesk server

Posted by Jason Web Hosting Monday 17 November 2008 9:37 pm

The following is a step by step guide on “How to install Mod_security2 on a Linux/Plesk server” which is use to secure your server from Apache exploits.

First download and extract mod_security
cd /etc/httpd/
wget http://www.modsecurity.org/download/modsecurity-apache_2.5.7.tar.gz
tar -zxf modsecurity-apache_2.5.7.tar.gz
cd modsecurity-apache_2.5.7/apache2

Next compile mod_security at a module using apxs. BTW, APXS is an Apache tool for building Apache modules.
apxs -cia mod_security2.c

you may realise you don’t have the apxs on your server, in that case you will have to install httpd-devel package using yum.
yum install httpd-devel

Once mod_security2 is installed, make sure you have the ‘LoadModule‘ line in your Apache configuration (httpd.conf) file and the module “mod_security2.so” itself under ‘modules’ directory.

LoadModule security2_module modules/mod_security2.so

Now, create a modsecurity configuration file as modsecurity.conf under /etc/httpd/conf.d/ directory, as *.conf in the conf.d directory gets loaded. Below is the sample configuration file you may use:

#SecFilterEngine DynamicOnly
SecFilterEngine On
SecFilterDefaultAction “deny,log,status:500″
SecFilterScanPOST On
SecFilterCheckURLEncoding On
SecFilterCheckCookieFormat On
SecFilterCheckUnicodeEncoding Off
SecFilterNormalizeCookies On
SecFilterCookieFormat 1
SecServerResponseToken Off

#If you want to scan the output, uncomment these
#SecFilterScanOutput On
#SecFilterOutputMimeTypes “(null) text/html text/plain”

# Only record the interesting stuff
SecAuditEngine RelevantOnly
SecAuditLog /var/log/modsecurity/audit_log

# You normally won’t need debug logging
SecFilterDebugLevel 0
SecFilterDebugLog /var/log/modsecurity/modsec_debug_log

#Include the sample rule files, you just downloaded
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/apache2-rules.conf*
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/badips.conf*
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/blacklist.conf*
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/blacklist2.conf*
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/proxy.conf*
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/rootkits.conf*
Include /etc/httpd/conf.d/rules.conf*

Download the sample rules from
wget http://hostanswers.net/modsecurity/sample_mod_rules.tar.gz

Please note: These are just the default rules that come with Mod_security2 and you need to modify them as per your needs.

At the end, make sure you create a modsecurity directory and ‘audit_log’ file and restart apache.
mkdir /var/log/modsecurity
touch /var/log/modsecurity/audit_log
service httpd restart

If you have problems accessing websites look at error log at
/etc/httpd/logs/audit_log

Just FYI, if you wish to disable mod_security, just comment the modsecurity ‘LoadModule’ line in your Apache configuration file and restart apache.

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Private SSL Certificate for Plesk

Posted by Jason Web Hosting Monday 3 November 2008 8:00 pm

If you wish to have a private SSL certificate for Plesk rather than the default one, upload the new SSL certificate under the directory “/usr/local/psa/admin/conf/” with the name “httpsd-new.pem”. The Plesk default certificate is stored in “httpsd.pem” file. Edit the Plesk configuration file httpsd.conf which is in the same directory and search the line

SSLCertificateFile “/usr/local/psa/admin/conf/httpsd.pem”

replace it with

SSLCertificateFile “/usr/local/psa/admin/conf/httpsd-new.pem”

Save the file and restart the psa service.

service psa stop
service psa start

You will now have your own certificate for Plesk.

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Plesk Does Not Load

Posted by Jason Web Hosting Sunday 2 November 2008 9:04 pm

If you are unable to access the Plesk control panel, take a look at the Plesk error logs which resides under

/usr/local/psa/admin/logs/httpsd_error_log

if you the below error message, it means you are running out of Shared Memory Segments (shmget - where a portion of memory is accessed by multiple processes).