Are you a Facebook user? For your information, LiewCF Tech Blog is now on Facebook too! Please “like” it!Beside publishing links to latest blog posts, the LiewCF Tech Blog page also publish interesting and useful links, which do not get published on the blog.

How to join LiewCF Tech Blog on Facebook?

1. Visit http://facebook.com/liewcf.blog (login facebook if you haven’t)
2. Click “Like” button. Welcome!

Did I tell you that, there’ll be exclusive facebook only giveaway on the Facebook page? Click here to join now.

(Twitter user? Follow me on Twitter – @liewcf )

Join “LiewCF Tech Blog” on Facebook! is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

In conjunction of Firefly‘s latest announcement of new flight routes to Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, Firefly will be giving out complimentary vouchers to celebrate.

LiewCF.com got 4 pairs of vouchers (that’s 8 round flight tickets) to give out. 2 pairs already gave out in the Twitter giveaway last week (Congratulations to the winners!).

I still have 2 pairs FireFly vouchers left (Kota Kinabalu or Kuching) for FREE giveaway. Read on to learn how to win!

How to win free FireFly flight tickets?

It is simple, just follow the instructions.

1. Join FireFly Facebook page by clicking the Like button or you can follow @FlyFireFly on Twitter.
   
2. Submit a comment to give at least a travel tip (the more the merrier) in Kuching and Kota Kinabalu. The tips could be local attractions, food, hotel, transportation, etc. Anything that is helpful to travelers.
3. Please share this giveaway with your friends.
   
   
   
   
   

   
   
   

P.S. Please make sure you included your REAL email address when submit your comment, so that I can contact you when you won the prize!

This giveaway begins now and ends Saturday, 18th December at 2359hrs GMT+8. The winner will be selected by best tip and informed by email.

You need to know…

Disclosure: I will get a pairs of free flight ticket from FireFly by running this giveaway.

Thanks to FireFly for sponsoring the giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? Contact me.

Giveaway: FireFly Flight Tickets to Kota Kinabalu and Kuching is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

In conjunction of Firefly’s latest announcement of new flight routes to Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, Firefly will be giving out complimentary vouchers to celebrate.

LiewCF.com got 4 pairs of vouchers (that’s 8 round flight tickets) to give out.

I would like to give higher priority to my Twitter followers. Therefore, 2 pairs of flight tickets will be given to my Twitter followers, exclusively!

The giveaway contest ended yesterday. The winners are picked randomly using Random.org.

The winners!

Here are the winners! Congratulations!

• @vinivedivici won 1 pair of FireFly vouchers to Kuching, Sarawak.
• @ickyuck won 1 pair of Firefly vouchers to Kota Kinabalu, Sabah.

The winners will be contacted by Twitter Direct Message and Email.

More to come!

Don’t feel bad if you didn’t win. Thanks for participating. And, I still have 2 more pairs Firefly vouchers to giveaway! Stay tuned!

Follow me on Twitter – @liewcf

Disclosure: I will get a pairs of free flight ticket from FireFly by running this giveaway.

Thanks to FireFly for sponsoring the giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? Contact me.

Congrats! FireFly Flight Tickets Twitter Giveaway Winners! is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

I told you that ">my server was under malicious traffic attacks. The server is more stable now but still can see load spikes now and then, even though they didn’t bring down the server.

From the above graph, you can see the server load of past 2 weeks. The highest load was around 140! Imagine that kind of load on a 8 cores sever! Impossible to handle. What we know is that the attacker use cloud computing like Amazon EC2 to launch the attacks.

Is it “Cloud-based DDoS”? The dark side of cloud computing…

So, what can a home-based blogger like me do to fight against the massive attacks? The software based protection such as firewall, (D)Dos-Deflate, etc have been installed. They helped a bit but not the solution.

I’ll need a fully managed web hosting with high security and DDoS protection at affordable (not “cheap”, I understand the setup is expensive) price tag…

Am I asking too much?

Firehost secure hosting?

For your information, many web hosting providers do NOT accept sites that receive DDoS attacks in their network.

So far, I only found Firehost fulfilled the requirements. It is a cloud hosting with Enterprise-security. Plus, they know WordPress, the blogging platform I am using.

Starting at USD$200 per month, with the similar setup, I will have to pay more (USD$400+/month) for Firehost secure hosting if I would want to migrate over.

Yes, I’ll migrate that if the attacks continues and do not let my site off…

Do you know other hosting providers offer the similar protection like Firehost? Please tell me in comment.

P.S. This is NOT a paid post. Just sharing the information I found during my site’s down time.

HELP! Need Affordable Fully Managed Hosting with Enterprise-Security and DDoS Protection! is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

In the past week, my server was down couple times due to massive attacks from unknown sources targeting liewcf.com (this blog).

The malicious traffic caused high server load (load spikes) and brought down the server. Restarted web services didn’t help.

That was very frustrating. Website uptime is essential for a full-time blogger, just like how important is the car for a taxi driver.

Website down = No traffic = No $$$

I spent hours and hours sitting in front computer to monitor the server load. Mood went down with the server…

Fighting attackers!

Here I have to praise the support of my hosting provider — Liquidweb.

In order to monitor my server for load spikes that happen randomly, server admins are assigned for 24/7 close monitoring. *thumbs up*

In the end, the server admin blacklisted the IP addresses to return the server to normal stage.

So far, the server performance is good now. There are still some load spikes now and then, but eventually they go down before bringing down the server again.

How about cloud hosting?

Cloud server is not a solution for random load spikes. It does not auto scale. It is flexible but only when you configure it manually (on-demand server).

It is good only when your server need to scale up/down frequently. Also, most cloud server is self-managed. I am not a server admin guy.

Fully managed cloud hosting like Rackspace Cloud Sites (not Cloud Server) does auto scaling but it is pay-per-use. Thus, you might end up paying a bomb in order to keep your website online under massive attacks. Not cost efficient.

Future protection?

This is not the first time and will not be the last time.

The server has some server protection software installed but they are not bulletproof. I cannot afford the enterprise class of hosting environment (multiple server, hardware firewall, load balancing, etc).

I am considering to add a hardware firewall though.

How do you deal with malicious traffic attacks?

Update: Just when I wanted to publish this article, the server experienced another load spike last for few minutes…

Massive Malicious Traffic Attacks. Cloud Hosting to Rescue? is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

Yesterday was not a good day for many Malaysian webmasters and myself. Google has detected malicious software on our websites and redirected every visitor to a warning page with link to the diagnostic page.

What happened actually?

We are the victims of the failure of Innity, an online advertisement network. According to the official announcement, their server was affected (hacked?):

…In summary, a portion of our domain; innity.net, which operates as a content delivery network focused on delivering static banner files to our end user, was affected in Indonesia and this led to Google classifying our domain as being infected by malware.

Though the company took necessary actions to solve the problem but Google will take up to 48 hours to clear the warning…

The damages after listed as malware site

Believe me, it is one of the worst nightmares to your website.

1. Direct visitor to your websites will blocked by the scary malware warning and they will leave and might never come back again.

   

2. The Google will append “this site may harm your computer” in your site’s search engine results.
3. Twitter.com bans your site URL. Every tweet containing the website URL will not get published.
4. For a full-time blogger like me, it means drop in online income for the period!

What can we do after listed as malware site?

If you have signed up Google Webmaster Tools account, you will get notified when Google detect malware on your site and Google will send you an email.

In Google Webmaster Tools account, click on your site, then click “Malware” under “Diagnostics” to see the details of the harmful code found on the site.

There, you can click on “request a review” link to request a review of your site after you have removed all the harmful code.

The “Request a review” link might only appear couple hours later after your site listed as malware site.

Read about malware and hacked sites

What did I do to solve the problem?

I have removed all the innity’s advertisement codes immediately and requested a review on Google webmaster tools page.

Now, nothing I can do anymore except to “WAIT”.

My two cents

Patience is very important when something bad happened unexpectedly.

Though Innity’s response promptly in this case but the damage is done. I believe the case hurt many of its publishers. No website owner wants to get banned because of a single advertisement script.

Anyway, this is not the worst time in my blogging life. The worst nightmare was banned by Google because of selling text link ads. It took couple months to get back into Google search engine result pages.

The problem will be solved eventually and I shall continuously bring you the great content.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who notified me about the bad news. *hug*

Update (Sep 21, 2010): My site is back to normal now. Thanks for support!

When Google says “This site may harm your computer” about Your Website… is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

To celebrate 5th anniversary of pro-blogging, I would like to thank you by giving you some useful stuff for FREE. Here you are, the WinX HD Video Converter for Mac. 20 copies and total worth USD$719!

WinX HD Video Converter for Mac, as a professional Mac HD converter software, provides the perfect solution to convert Blu-ray videos and videos from HDTV and HD camcorders, like JVC, Panasonic, Sony and Cannon to other formats. This HD converter for Mac supports converting Multi-track HD video M2TS, MKV, AVCHD, HDTV BDAV and MPEG-TS video movies.

It can also convert video files to the video formats that playable on both portable and console players, such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4), Apple TV, PS3, PSP, Xbox, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, etc.

Read on to know how to get the free giveaway.

How to get the prize?

Simply follow the TWO steps below to get your USD$30 worth all-in-one video converter software!

1. Download the WinX HD video Converter for MAc.
2. Install it, then register your copy with the this volume license code (valid for 20 copies): WINXMC-3721-4728-9342

This is “first come, first served”. Once 20 copies have been registered using the volume license code, the code is no longer valid. Act fast! Tell your family and friends!

Need a Windows version? Click here to get it!

Follow me on Twitter (@liewcf) and Subscribe to the newsletter for more giveaways and updates.

Giveaway: All-in-one WinX HD Video Converter for Mac – 20 copies (worth $719) is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

To celebrate 5th anniversary of pro-blogging, I would like to thank you by giving you some useful stuff for FREE. Here you are, the WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe for Windows. 20 copies and total worth USD$599!

WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe builds 160 video codec and 50 audio codec, a perfect multi-functional combination of HD Video Converter, DVD Burner and Website Video Downloader.

Without any third-party codec, it can support Multi-track HD video M2TS, MKV, AVCHD, HDTV BDAV and MPEG-TS video movies.

It also supports converting all the High Definition and HD-Camcorder videos, to both portable and console players, such as iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, PS3, PSP, Xbox, Zune, PDA, Blackberry, Nokia, Android, Zen, etc,.

Read on to know how to get the free giveaway.

How to get the prize?

Simply follow the TWO steps below to get your USD$30 worth all-in-one video converter software!

1. Download the WinX HD video Converter Deluxe.
2. Install it, then register your copy with the this volume license code (valid for 20 copies): WINHCD-8712-2671-0056

This is “first come, first served”. Once 20 copies have been registered using the volume license code, the code is no longer valid. Act fast! Tell your family and friends!

Follow me on Twitter (@liewcf) and Subscribe to the newsletter for more giveaways and updates.

Giveaway: WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe for Windows – 20 copies (worth $599) is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

This post is part of Birthday Giveaway 2010 series. Make sure you follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the site feed to be the first to know when I have a new giveaway!

Congratulations to the winners of my Birthday Giveaway 2010! You won a full license of Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate worth USD$59.99! 5 copies are giving away (worth USD$300!).

Here are the lucky winners:

• MurphyReality
• myimmortalize
• jimi2061
• 4GTFLL
• Max5

Winners will be contacted by twitter or email or anyway I can get to contact them. License would be sent via email by the Daniusoft.

More giveaways are coming very soon! Stay tuned! Follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the site feed NOW!

Congratulations! You Won Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate! (Birthday Giveaway 2010) is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.

The following giveaway is part of Birthday Giveaway 2010 series. Make sure you follow me on Twitter or subscribe to the site feed to be the first to know when I have a new giveaway!

Update: This giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winners!

Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate

When dealing with videos on computer, we often need to rip a DVD, download Youtube videos, convert videos to different formats, burn a DVD, transfer video to other video devices…

How nice if there is an All-In-One software which do ALL of these video tasks?

Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate is one of the ultimate video software that cover almost all your video tasks:

• Remove DRM copy protection from WMV WMA, iTunes M4P M4A M4V AAC M4B ASF.
• Rip DVD to all pop video & audio formats while maintaining the high quality.
• Convert between all popular video & audio formats, even HD videos.
• Directly transfer songs & video to portable players like iPod, iPhone, iPad, PSP, etc.
• Trim, crop, merge and add effects to customize your video.
• Burn any videos to DVD disc directly.
• Download Video from Youtube and other Video sharing websites.
• 500% conversion speed with NVIDIA® CUDA^TM support.

Aren’t you impressed? The retail price is USD$59.99

Since you are reading this, you stand a chance to win a copy of Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate, 100% FREE!

The prizes

As part of Birthday Giveaway 2010 series, I have 5 full licenses of Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate for giveaway to you.

How to enter?

Simply do ONE of the following to enter the sweepstakes, do more to increase your chances of winning.

1. Leave a comment below tell us how would you use the software.
2. Click here to tweet about this giveaway to your friends.
3. Blog about this giveaway. (please inform me in the comment or email)

How will the winner be selected?

This giveaway will be closed at 12noon, August 24th, 2010 (GMT +8)

I’ll collect all entries in a numbered list. Winners will be chosen randomly using the Random Integer Generator of Random.org.

Winners will be contacted to redeem their prizes.

Update: This giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winners!

(Disclosure: I have received an Editorial license of the software. The 5 full licenses is sponsored by Daniusoft Studio)

Birthday Giveaway: Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate is an article from: LiewCF Tech Blog. For more updates, please follow @liewcf on Twitter, join Facebook page and subscribe free newsletter.