Rules of AEM

Prevent DDoS in Apache & IP Block Automation DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are a type of cyberattack that can cause serious damage to your web server. These attacks involve flooding your server with a huge volume of traffic, overwhelming its resources and causing it to crash. In this blog post, we'll discuss how to prevent DDoS attacks in Apache, without using any third part tool/application.     Available Options to Prevent DDoS : You can use various mentioned methods to achieve the same. But using WAF, CDN, etc will cost extra dollars. Which might not be necessary for a small scale application.   Use a Web Application Firewall (WAF): A WAF can help detect and block malicious traffic before it reaches your Apache server. It can also help block common attack vectors, such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS). Install mod_evasive: mod_evasive is an Apache module that helps detect and block DDoS attac...

 Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is a popular content management system that is widely used by businesses to manage and publish digital content. With the increasing amount of sensitive data being stored and shared online, it's important for AEM users to be aware of the security features that the platform offers. In this blog, we'll discuss some of the key security features of AEM and provide tips for keeping your AEM instance secure. Authentication and Authorization AEM provides several options for authentication and authorization. Users can log in using their credentials, which can be verified using LDAP or other external identity providers. Once authenticated, users are assigned roles and permissions, which determine what actions they can perform within AEM. To keep your AEM instance secure, it's important to ensure that users only have the permissions they need to perform their jobs. For example, if a user doesn't need to publish content, they should not be given perm...

HTTP Smuggling is a technique used by attackers to inject malicious requests into a web application. This can cause significant security risks and data breaches if not addressed properly. In this blog, we will discuss what HTTP Smuggling is, how it can be exploited, and the solution to prevent it in Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). What is HTTP Smuggling? HTTP Smuggling is a technique where attackers can manipulate the HTTP requests sent to a web server to bypass security mechanisms. The attacker can manipulate the request in a way that makes it look like a legitimate request to the server, but in reality, it is carrying malicious payloads. This technique is particularly dangerous because it can be used to bypass firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and web application firewalls (WAFs). How can HTTP Smuggling be Exploited in AEM? AEM is a popular web content management system used by organizations worldwide. As with any web application, AEM is vulnerable to HTTP Smuggling attacks if ...

Upgrading the dispatcher module in AEM Often the AEM dev-ops team faces the challenge on Dispatcher upgradation. It is not clear anywhere how to do it and what precautions one should take while doing the same.  In this article we will cover these steps,  Upgrading the Dispatcher Module : Step 1 -  Download the required dispatcher module version from the  Adobe dispatcher download page  ,  Make sure you download the dispatcher version module as per the OS. https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-dispatcher/using/getting-started/release-notes.html?lang=en Step 2 -  Extract the dispatcher module at some location on server or local machine.                      tar -xvzf <dispatcher-xxxxxxxx.tar.gz> (linux)  Step 3 -  Copy the extracted dispatcher-xxxxxxxxxx.so file to the module folder of the server.       ...

 Managing AEM Repository Size Growth Managing your AEM repository size growth can be challenging for numerous reasons. What’s more, it may suddenly start to grow unexpectedly and fill up space in the assigned drive of your AEM application. In this post, I want to share a few AEM utilities & methods which can help you to not only manage the AEM repository size but also help to improve the AEM application performance. 1: Tar Compaction (also known as Revision Cleanup) By running the regular tar compaction, you can not only control the AEM repository size growth, but it will also help improve the AEM application performance. Tar compaction reclaims the disk space by removing the obsolete/redundant data from your AEM application. You can use both online and offline compaction. You can schedule online Tar compaction during weekdays after business hours & offline compaction on weekends (Non-business hours or during your designated Maintenance Window). 2: Garbage Collection By run...

The dispatcher is used as a load balancing/caching tool by AEM. It can also be used to block anyone from accessing your AEM author instance. This is to ensure that no one outside the client’s network can access it. AEM Author and publisher should never be exposed directly. In most cases, clients may also require a block to be put on AEM pub dispatchers before going live. This is to ensure that no one can see the site except for the client so performance, penetration, and UAT testing can be performed before going live. In this article, we will see, 5 easy steps to enable IP whitelisting in Apache so only the allowed list of IPs have access to AEM through the dispatcher. 1) In Apache to enable whitelisting, the Require directive is used which is provided by the mod_authz_host module. Make sure that you have the module enabled first in  /dispatcher/src/conf.modules.do/00-base.conf LoadModule authz_host_module modules/mod_authz_host.so 2) In the ams default variable file /dispatcher/s...

How to create AEM package via CURL  Most of our dev ops and AEM developers face issue while automating the AEM package creation via Curl.  I will explain the command and process for it.  in AEM package creation is a 3 steps process.  1- AEM package creation  2 - Filter addition  3- Package build Let's see all these 3 steps in detail -  AEM package creation  it is simple step -  curl -u admin:admin -X POST http://localhost:4502/crx/packmgr/service/.json/etc/packages/my_packages/testpackage?cmd=create \ -d packageName=testpackage \ -d groupName=my_packages Filter Addition  This is a complex step where you need to be careful while adding the parameters.  General command , in this " /content/my-site" is my package filter. You can also define the rule like exclude in exclude section.  curl -u admin:admin -X POST http://localhost:4502/crx/packmgr/update.jsp \ -F path=/etc/packages/my_packages/testpackage.zip -F packageName=testpack...

How to Increase Apache Request Per Second ? By default, Apache web server is configured to support 160 requests per second. As your website traffic increases, Apache will start dropping additional requests and this will spoil customer experience.  Here’s how to increase Apache requests per second. 1. Install MPM module We need to install MPM Apache module to be able to increase Apache requests per second. You can use mpm_worker or mpm_event module for this, instead of mpm_prefork module which consumes a lot of memory. You can easily install MPM module in Apache with following command For CentOS7/RHEL7 : Adjust /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/00-mpm.conf Comment the line LoadModule mpm_prefork_module modules/mod_mpm_prefork.so by adding # in front of it. Uncomment the line LoadModule mpm_worker_module modules/mod_mpm_worker.so by removing # in front of it. For Ubuntu/Debian :  Use a2dismod / a2enmod to disable mpm_prefork and enable mpm_worker 2. Increase Max Connections in Apach...