720-891-1663
What follows is a series of tools that I find useful and hopefully you will also to check various Internet settings. Not all of them are directly security related; some are related to availability and performance. Most of the tools are useful for all users, but some are more useful to web site developers and/or IT operations folks. If so, that is noted.
TOOLS
SSL Labs Web Site Security Check
Do you know how fast your Internet connection is compared to what your Internet provider claims? Here is an easy tool to find out. You can check it periodically because speeds tend to vary depending on who else in your neighborhood or even somewhere else upstream from you is using the Internet. While Internet providers try to have enough bandwidth available to take care of everyone, unless you are a particular class of business user, your Internet provider does not guarantee the speed of your connection.
Note that for most consumers, the UPLOAD speed is MUCH slower than the DOWNLOAD speed and that, in general, works, unless you are uploading large files.
The most popular speed testing site is https://www.speedtest.net .
To use it, go to the site and click on GO
When the test is complete, which may take a couple of minutes depending on your Internet connection, you will see a screen like this that will show both your UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD speeds.
The results show your PING time, which is a measure of how long it takes to send one packet to the test site (which will be different for each site), the download speed and then the upload speed. It also shows where the test site that it connected to is located.
Many ISPs license their own copy of Speed test, but the process works the same for all of them.
Sometimes you can’t seem to get to a web site that you know exists. Is there a problem with your computer or Internet access or is the site down. Go to https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ and enter the name of the web site in question. In this example, I want to see if doordash is down. In this case, apparently, it is down for everyone.
IT operations folks are very familiar with this tool but anyone can use it. If you want to see if a web site’s SSL (encryption) certificate is configured correctly, here is a free and easy way to do that. NOTE: JUST BECAUSE THE CERTIFICATE IS CONFIGURED CORRECTLY DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE SITE IS SECURE. THIS IS JUST ONE PIECE OF THE PUZZLE.
Go to SSL labs web site at https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/ and enter the name of the site that you want to test. The test will usually take a few minutes to complete. In this case, I am testing our website. Here are the results:
While there is a LOT of information in the report that is useful to website developers and IT operations folks, you should focus on the letter grade at the top. If the grade is not an A or a B, be careful.
For IT folks, the rest of the report explains why you got that grade.
Want to see if your firewall is working right or whether your computers are exposed to the Internet. While Shields Up from Steve Gibson is a bit geeky (because Steve it a lot geeky), the results are easy to interpret. You want to see all green boxes. Pretty simple.
To start, go to the Shields Up page on Steve’s web site at https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 . Note there is an amazing about of free stuff on the site, but we are going to focus on this one tool. Here is what you will see; click on proceed.
Clicking on proceed will take you to this page – Scroll down to where it says Shields Up Services!!:
Scroll down to where it says Your computer at IP xx.xx.xx.xx is being carefully examined. This test will take a few minutes, but in the end, you should see something like this:
First, I cut out part of my own computer’s address which is why the addres s at the top looks strange. What is important here that you see all green boxes. blue boxes are OK, but not as good as green. Red boxes are bad. At this point, if you see red, you will likely need an IT person to help you.
This one is also a bit geeky in the subject matter, but again the answer is really all you care about. BGP is an Internet protocol that big web sites and Internet providers (ISPs) use to improve reliability. The problem is that BGP was created in the early 1980s and didn’t consider security. Finally, there is a new spec that adds security, but ISPs and web sites need to make changes to use it. To see if your ISP has upgraded yet, visit the Is BGP Safe Yet web site hosted by Internet provider Cloudflare.
Note that McAfee is saying that the site is malicious. IT IS SAFE. McAfee is wrong. Hopefully they will fix their software soon. Here is McAfee’s message right now.
Here is what you will see when you get to the actual web site:
In this case, the answer is no; my ISP has not implemented new BGP security features.
Cloudflare wants to embarrass ISPs into implementing the security features, so they are ‘naming and shaming’ them. Scroll down to see the list.
Firefox Monitor is a free service that notifies you via email if your email address (one or more addresses) has been part of any reported security breach. The purpose of that is so that you can change the password associated with that web site and any other site where you use the same password.
To use it, go to Https://Monitor.Firefox.com and enter your email like this
When you click on Check for Breaches, you will see where and when, if ever, that email was part of a breach —
It will tell what the breached site was, when the breach happened and what data was stolen.
IF you choose to create a Monitor account, it will warn you in the future if that email address is breached.
Down detector provides a history of requests for a given site. For example, if you go to Downdetector.com you can enter a web site or ISP name.
In this we will enter Comcast and get this response back
If you click on the Comcast graphic and then scroll down, you will see this
This represents the number of people who asked about Comcast being up in the last 24 hours. The higher the number, the greater likelihood there is a problem.
Scroll down some more and you can see a live outage report map. While this one shows a lot of yellow, you should more concerned if it shows a lot of red.
Domain Name Services or DNS is the Internet service that all browsers and computers use in order to contact an Internet web site or email server or any other Internet connected service. You type www.mywebsite.com and DNS translates that to 105.46.52.203, which your computer and the rest of the Internet uses to connect to the right computer.
Almost all Internet providers run DNS services. In addition, other companies like Google run similar services.
Internet providers like running DNS services because it allows them to collect information about every web site, every image on every web page and every music server you connect to and every email that you send, among other Internet services.
What they have not done, for the most part, until now, is keep you away from malicious or adult content. This means that if your kids click on a link and it is malicious or not suitable for young eyes, your Internet provider’s DNS service will connect you anyway.
Enter Cloudflare, one of the largest Internet content caching service in the world. They also run a DNS service at address 1.1.1.1, but they have now added two new services. At 1.1.1.2 is a DNS service that filters out malicious content and at 1.1.1.3 there is a DNS service that filters out adult content. This service is free. To learn more about it and how to use it, go to Cloudflare’s web site by searching for “1.1.1.1 for families“ in your favorite search engine.