The local firewall software has been updated. As it allows now to handle a timeout on blacklisted IP's, the entire code to feed the black-list has been simplified dramatically. This also means that way more sources of data will be fed to the blacklist processor, and the blacklisting will be also way faster than before.
Additionally, the firewall will also handle de-listing from the blacklist itself (time-based).  

 Over time, with every OS Version change, PHP and Apache and modules change, things also changed under the hood. That's how I noticed that when I first had written my Harvester trap to play around with PHP internal semaphore function, I had to adapt my code every time a change on the OS, PHP or apache happened.
Well, got fed up with that and decided to rewrite the function to work without the semaphore and got it running nicely.
So, dear bots, you are welcome to come back to my site, no...  

 For some time now I have used the premise to always use a dedicated E-Mail Alias for every site I register to. Living by that rule, I always tend to tell all the users having an account on my server (mostly my family) to do the same. The drawback of this was that I became the personal admin of everyone and as Admins are known to be very lazy - it soon became a problem I wanted to outsource. Well - it has happened. the MX-Tools interface is available to registered users where they can take care o...  

 Some base functions and modules have had localization added in German and French language.
The regular php/pot functionality has been used to add some translations. Some modules (private modules - aka. TimeSheet and Budget) were already localized. All that needed to be done was to find a way to also apply it to the rest of the code.

This has been achieved with most of the user-facing page code. Not all Admin-pagess have yet been adapted.  

 as the kids start getting older, and they tend to test out the limits of the "internet" - I had to do something to prevent them from discovering things they should not see.
As I had already implemented a phishing and add-blocking system throughout the DNS Server I host on my server, what I needed was a way to block the kids access to some by us parents unwanted content.

The answer to this question was Bind9 + views + openDNS.
Bind9 and views allowed me to setup some ACL...  

 The phpPhobos/Stargate website has been configured to only accept HTTPS connections due to recent revelations concerning secret service around the globe spying on all connections to create metadata.
The only protection for us - humble citizens on this planet - is to provide the secret services so many data to de-crypt that it won't make a difference anymore.
As a little add-on, this site will allow only high grade encryption ciphers, and especially those known to not allow Man in the M...  

 Have upgraded the base OS of the Server to 14.04 LTS to avoid having upgrading it all too often. Apart from some little things that needed fixing, it went well. Still don't understand why Ubuntu keeps using ash as sh shell... Also don't try changing it on the fly. dpkg absolutely hates it 

 Stargate has been cross-migrated to a new and faster hardware. In the same process, the OS has been updated and the software used to deliver mail changed from cyrus to dovecot. As a goodie, all security protocols have been enhanced again, and dynamic blacklisting is even more sensitive than it was before - as SMTP auth probing is now taken into account.
The hardware specs are as follow:

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770T CPU @ 2.50GHz
• 16GB Ram
• 1x60GB SSD for the ...  

 As script-kiddies from around the world are so keen to probe for any type of existing software etc., I decided to enhance the currently running blacklisting system a little.
Until now, people probing non existing pages on this server had 3 attempts before being blocked by the websites software (put into a quarantine access). However, as soon as they continued probing from the same IP Address - they were locked out hard by the firewall which checks the system on a regular base for adding new...  

 Had always wanted to have a remote site I can do tests with. This whish has been granted by EDIS.
It took a little bit, as I had sent the package in just before the Christmas holidays - but it is up and running now. Even the Monitoring is now active.

UPDATE: Not 24 Hours only, and already brute force password probing. Activated my dynamic blacklisting script - using Shoreline firewall to drop th...