(Dec 29) It was discovered that missing input validation in the twikidraw and anywikidraw actions can result in the execution of arbitrary code. This security issue in being actively exploited. [More…]
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(Dec 30) “halfdog” discovered that incorrect interrupt handling in Virtualbox, a x86 virtualization solution – can lead to denial of service. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More…]
| Rank | Company site | OS | Outage hh:mm:ss |
Failed Req% |
DNS | Connect | First byte |
Total |
| 1 | ServerStack | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.000 | 0.039 | 0.027 | 0.053 | 0.054 |
| 2 | Swishmail | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.003 | 0.037 | 0.025 | 0.051 | 0.105 |
| 3 | New York Internet | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.006 | 0.078 | 0.025 | 0.677 | 0.774 |
| 4 | Server Intellect | Windows Server 2008 | 0:00:00 | 0.006 | 0.035 | 0.066 | 0.132 | 0.328 |
| 5 | Datapipe | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.009 | 0.102 | 0.015 | 0.032 | 0.049 |
| 6 | Pair Networks | FreeBSD | 0:00:00 | 0.009 | 0.092 | 0.041 | 0.087 | 0.294 |
| 7 | Virtual Internet | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.009 | 0.072 | 0.061 | 0.182 | 0.321 |
| 8 | www.uk2.net | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.009 | 0.121 | 0.066 | 0.134 | 0.220 |
| 9 | www.codero.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.009 | 0.183 | 0.086 | 0.370 | 0.747 |
| 10 | ReliableServers.com | Linux | 0:00:00 | 0.016 | 0.206 | 0.027 | 0.059 | 0.065 |
Serverstack had the most reliable hosting company site during December, responding to every request from our monitoring system. We have only been monitoring Serverstack for three months, but it has quickly established itself as one of the hosting company sites with the fewest failed requests over that period, despite being located in the area affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Swishmail (second), New York Internet (third), Datapipe (fifth) and Reliable Servers (tenth) are also hosted within the area in which Hurricane Sandy made landfall and the presence of five such affected companies in the top ten reinforces Datapipe founder Robb Allen’s assertion that the recent history of the US North East with events including grid blackouts, Hurricane Irene and the 9/11 attacks has helped improve the resilience of the internet connectivity and hosting industry in that area.
December saw New York Internet (third) named NJBIZ’s “Emerging Business of the Year” for 2012. NJBIZ profiled New York Internet’s New Jersey datacentre in 2011, and praised the company’s renovation and retrofitting of an older property in order to accommodate modern technology.
December’s top ten list is dominated by FreeBSD and Linux, with the exception of Windows specialists Server Intellect (fourth) who have the only site running Windows. Server Intellect, which now offers Windows Server 2012 as standard on all dedicated and cloud servers, was second last month and regularly features among the top ten most reliable hosting company sites.
During December we added a new performance measurement point hosted at Webair’s datacentre, in Amsterdam, bringing the total number of measurement points to 11.
Netcraft measures and makes available the response times of around forty leading hosting providers’ sites. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period.
From a customer’s point of view, the percentage of failed requests is more pertinent than outages on hosting companies’ own sites, as this gives a pointer to reliability of routing, and this is why we choose to rank our table by fewest failed requests, rather than shortest periods of outage. In the event the number of failed requests are equal then sites are ranked by average connection times.
Information on the measurement process and current measurements is available.
2012: A Look Back
Jan01
Another year is coming to a close, and it’s time to look back and reflect on what we’ve accomplished in the past twelve months. The WordPress community is stronger than ever, and some of the accomplishments of the past year are definitely worth remembering.
Software Releases
We had two major releases of the WordPress web application with versions 3.4 and 3.5, as well as 5 security releases during 2012. 3.4 included the theme customizer, while 3.5 became the long awaited “media release” featuring a new uploader and gallery management tool. 3.5 contained code contributions from more people than ever, and we hope to continue growing the contributor ranks in the year ahead. We currently have native apps on 6 mobile platforms — iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Nokia, and WebOS — and saw several updates there as well.
Plugin Directory
A number of improvements were made to the Plugin Directory in 2012. More cosmetic updates, like the introduction of branded plugin page headers, make it a nicer browsing experience, while functional changes like better-integrated support forums, plugin reviews, and a favorites system made the plugin directory even more useful as a resource.
The “Make” Network and Team Reps
2012 was the year that saw the creation of Make.wordpress.org, a network of sites for the teams of contributors responsible for the different areas of the WordPress project. Now anyone can follow along and get involved with the teams that work on core, theme review, forum support, documentation, and more. In 2013 we’ll work to improve these sites to make it easier to become a contributor. Each team also now has elected Team Reps, a new role that has already led to more cross-team communication. Team reps post each week to the Updates blog so that the other reps can keep up with what’s going on in other teams.
WordPress Community Summit
At the end of October, about 100 of the most influential and respected members of the WordPress community attended an inaugural summit to discuss where we all stand, and to figure out where we go next with WordPress. A “conference of conversations,” this unconference made everyone an active participant, and while not every issue brought to the table was solved by the end of the event, the right questions were being asked.
Meetup.com
The WordPress Foundation now has a central account with Meetup.com. We’ve brought in a couple dozen existing meetup groups as a pilot to test the system, and are in the process of working with more existing meetups (as well as new ones) to join us so that local organizers won’t have to pay organizer dues and can get more support from the WordPress project.
Internet Blackout Day
We participated in the protest against SOPA/PIPA, Internet Blackout Day, on January 18. Though we usually stay out of politics, this campaign was important, and we not only participated in the blackout on WordPress.org, we encouraged our users to do so as well, and recommended plugins to provide blackout functionality. It was deemed the largest online protest in history.
WordCamps
And finally, it wouldn’t be a recap without counting up the WordCamps! There were 67 WordCamps around the world in 2012, bringing together WordPress users, developers, and fans. If you didn’t make it to a WordCamp this year, maybe it can be one of your new year resolutions: check the schedule to find one near you!
(Dec 30) Marc Schoenefeld discovered that an integer overflow in the ICC parsing code of Ghostscript can lead to the execution of arbitrary code. For the stable distribution (squeeze), this problem has been fixed in [More…]