Suricata is a free, open source, Intrusion Detection System software, or IDS for short. But it can also act as an Intrusion Prevention System, or IPS. It works by finding patterns using heuristics typically from network traffic. When configured to just warn about suspicious activity it is called an IDS, however when it blocks the […]

How to install Suricata on FreeBSD

How to install RKHunter on FreeBSD
In this post you will find simple instructions to install rkhunter on FreeBSD which is a root kit “hunter” so your system/s will have some security in place for that kind of unwanted software. But for those who do not know what a rootkit is, let’s give it a simple definition (which you can get […]

Donation Time 2020
This 2020 has been a difficult year for everyone. Because of this difficulty and the opportunities I had the chance to take, I’ve been able to contribute back to the open source community, not just with content here in Adminbyaccident.com, advocacy for a few tools such as my favorite OS (FreeBSD) and the usual mouthful […]

How to install Fail2ban on FreeBSD
Fail2ban is a complementary tool to your firewall. It works by scanning log files and bans IPs which present suspicious activity such as failed logins. It is compatible with many UNIX-like systems and is a security tool to have in your arsenal. It can filter not only ssh logins, but other services too, for example […]

How to set the locale in FreeBSD
The locale is the character set that will be used. And it is very important to match the keyboard you are using. Mind this also matters if you are transferring data to other systems. Different standards as the ASCII, UTF’s and the ISO’s, to name a few, have been put in place through the years […]

How to enable Geolocation in AWStats on FreeBSD 13.0
A few weeks ago, a guide explaining how to install AWStats on FreeBSD was released here in adminbyaccident.com. On that piece a basic install of AWStats is shown, however, a nice and important functionality of AWStats is missing. Knowing the location of visitors is a matter of interest, for the sake of it or because […]

How to install sudo in FreeBSD
Sudo is a very useful application. It allows a regular user to perform tasks only reserved to the root account. There is lots of documentation about sudo and there is even a book about it called “Sudo Mastery”. If you need to investigate deep on this, buy it. Why do you need this? Well… Everyone […]

How to install Apache in FreeBSD with ports
Or better said, how to install Apache the hard way. As mentioned before and many other times FreeBSD has two ways to install software. The easy one which is provided by the pkgng tool. And the not so easy one, ports. With ports you compile the programs and you can set the options the way […]

A word on Spectre and Meltdown
As professionals and many aficionados know, early this year some widespread vulnerabilities were found on Intel CPU’s as well as on AMD’s. It was a bit later discovered the flaws also affected some RISC architectures such as Power and ARM. Everybody went nuts and the world seemed to be tumbling because of two CPU vulnerabilities […]
FreeBSD particularities
As some others unix-like operating systems FreeBSD has some particularities aside to the UNIX heritage, licensing and the like. The init system is the way a system starts up and the BSD has always been different. If you happen to be a UNIX admin I am sure you are aware of this and the folks […]
