I have been using VPSville for some time for my domain network and other projects and have always been impressed with their service.

I have signed up for two of their Semi dedicated vps servers which they call ‘Megacity’ one to host my mail server and another to host my affiliate websites.

The VPSville control panel is very easy to use and fully functional, you can easily create new servers, reboot, gain SSH access, change passwords, monitor bandwidth and many other features.

They provide 25% discount on repeat custom. I currently have 10 VPS servers with them and two of the semi-dedicated servers. Discounts are also available if you may for 3, 6 or 12 months upfront.

Their prices go from £3.75 for their smallest server which they call Village with 64mb guaranteed RAM (burst to 128) 100GB Bandwidth and 5GM of disk space, up to £47.25 for their Megacity 3 Semi-Dedicated servers which 2Gb of RAM bursting to 4gb and 3000Gb Bandwidth and 160Gb of disk space.

They have Data centers in the UK, US and Canada, but appear to be a Canadian company. I have only used the London Data centre but have had no trouble with them at all.

I can not comment about support as I have had no reason to use support for anything, but if I do I will update this post with the results.

They take various forms of payment, the most critical one for me is Paypal as most of my business goes through Paypal. The only one comment I would make is that when buying a new server I can not seem to find the subscribe via Paypal option only a one off payment option, however, when you go into the existing account you can expand the payment options and create a Paypal subscription.

Another key advantage for me is that they do not have any fixed term contracts, you can pay month to month. This means that if I need a server for a project I can create one to use as a development server for £3.75 for a month and then kill it when I move the project onto my main web server.

Click here and use the coupon code SP25 to get started with VPSville

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1. Disable SSH if you do not need it

If you do not need ssh then disable it as it is always a vulnerability. If you are running a desktop/laptop with Ubuntu on it then remove ssh

apt-get remove openssh-server

2. Do not allow root login

The root user is the master user on your server, it gives access to everything and permissions to do anything on your server. If that gets hacked it is the worst possible scenario for your server.

Why risk allowing people to do brute force attacks on the root user? Make sure that you stop root from being able to directly access SSH.

Edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and change:

PermitRootLogin yes

to

PermitRootLogin no

Then restart ssh by running /etc/init.d/ssh restart

You will then have to SU from another user to become root or even better use the sudo command before executing root commands.

3. Restrict the users who can access the server via SSH

In addition to the above, you can restrict SSH access to your server to a limited number of users. In my case, I have only two users that can access the server via SSH, mine and the hosts support user.

Edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file and add:

AllowUsers username1 username2

to the bottom of the file

Then restart ssh by running /etc/init.d/ssh restart

4. Don’t use obvious usernames

As with everything, we are trying to make things a little harder for hackers. If you use an obvious or well known username, you are open to brute force attacks on that username. So don’t use obvious users.

5. Use Secure passwords

Make sure that your users password is secure, use alpha numeric passwords with mixed case and try to use special characters in your password.

6. Change the default ssh port

On the same theme as changing the default settings, you should change the default ssh port.

Edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and change where it says ‘port 22′ to a port number of your choice.

Then restart ssh by running /etc/init.d/ssh restart

7. Keep OpenSSH up-to-date

Make sure that you keep your whole system up-to-date especially OpenSSH

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

8. Always use ssh protocol 2

Most modern versions of linux will already be configured to run with ssh protocol 2 by default but it is always worth checking

edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

and check the protocol line says 2 and NOT 1

Protocol 2

Protocol 1 is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks

Then restart ssh by running /etc/init.d/ssh restart

9. Idle timeout

The idle timeout terminates an ssh session after a given period of inactivity. This is especially useful to prevent vulnerabilities from unattended ssh sessions. This is not as much a hack, but an opportunist but it is worth considering depending on your situation.

edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

ClientAliveInterval 300
ClientAliveCountMax 0
Then restart ssh by running /etc/init.d/ssh restart

10. Use Keys

A safe method of securing your SSH is by using keys. I will not go through the detailshere as they have been done before but take a look at the following tutorials:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-keyc.html

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ssh-password-less-login-with-dsa-publickey-authentication/

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ssh-passwordless-login-with-keychain-for-scripts/

11. Stop brute force attacks

Brute force attacks are where a hacker keeps trying a username with different passwords until they find one that matches. You can use software such as fail2ban or DenyHosts

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