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Amazon Linux 1 goes EOL 30 June 2023

10 Feb 2020/0 Comments/in Security/by Claire Christmas

Updated 13 January 2023

Amazon Linux 1 (Amazon Linux AMI) extended maintenance support period ends on June 30, 2023. After this date Amazon Linux 1 will no longer be supported.

Following customer feedback back in 2020, Amazon extended the end-of-life date of its Amazon Linux 1 and announced a maintenance support period – This Period is coming to an end.

This post has been updated with the latest information

On the 30th June 2023, Amazon Linux 1 goes End of Life (EOL). Amazon has also released Amazon Linux 2022. You have the option to upgrade to Amazon Linux 2 or Amazon Linux 2022.

Technology and security evolves. New bugs are fixed and new threats prevented, so in order to maintain a secure infrastructure it is important to keep all software and systems up to date. Once an operating system reaches end of life, it no longer receives updates, so will end up left with known security holes. Old operating systems don’t support the latest technologies, which new releases of software depend on, this can lead to compatibility issues.

Leaving old Amazon Linux 1 systems past June 2023 leaves you at risk to:

Security vulnerabilities of the system in question
Making your network more vulnerable as a whole
Software incompatibility
Compliance issues (PCI)
Poor performance and reliability

Amazon Linux 2022 includes many of the same packages that were present in Amazon Linux 2. Some of these package versions were updated for Amazon Linux 2022.

Changes:
MariaDB -> 10.5.16
Python -> 3.9

You can upgrade to either version of Amazon Linux – points to note are

Amazon Linux 2

3 years of support – End of Life: 30 Jun 2025.
CentOS based

Amazon Linux 2022

Fedora Based.
5 years of support
Uses DNF instead of YUM for updates

Not sure where to start? Contact us to help with your migration.

Magento 1.x EOL June 2020

20 Jan 2020/0 Comments/in Security/by Claire Christmas

Magento v1 (all versions up to and including v1.9.4.3) will stop receiving software security updates after June 2020. Don’t leave it too late to migrate if you haven’t already.

This affects both editions of Magento…

Open Source (formerly “Community Edition”)
Commerce (formerly “Enterprise Edition”)

We recommend you upgrade to the latest version of Magento 2, currently version 2.3.3.

v2 was released in November 2015 and has proven itself to be a huge upgrade on v1. It has improved performance, improved page caching, inbuilt rich snippets for structured data, enterprise-grade scalability, a new file structure with easier customization, CSS Preprocessing and a much more structured code base.

Magento have a number of Migration Tools available to assist you with moving from v1 to v2.

And of course, if you need an help with your migration please do feel free to contact us to discuss your requirements.

Toy Story Jessie running in front of a large green arrow

Debian 8 Jessie EOL 30th June 2020

6 Jan 2020/0 Comments/in Security/by Claire Christmas

On the 30th June 2020, Debian 8 “Jessie” goes End of Life (EOL). We recommend you upgrade to Debian 10 “Buster” (skipping Debian 9 if possible).

Debian 8 was one of a few OS’s that supported PHP 5, even after official support by the PHP developers ended in 2018. Debian 10 supports PHP 7.3, which may require some rewriting of code for your website or application, so it best to start planning your upgrade now!

Technology and security evolves. New bugs are fixed and new threats prevented, so in order to maintain a secure infrastructure it is important to keep all software and systems up to date. Once an operating system reaches end of life, it no longer receives updates, so will end up left with known security holes. Old operating systems don’t support the latest technologies, which new releases of software depend on, this can lead to compatibility issues.

Leaving old Debian 8 systems past June 2020 leaves you at risk to:

Security vulnerabilities of the out of date system.
Making your entire network more vulnerable.
Software incompatibility.
Compliance issues (PCI).
Poor performance and reliability.

Debian End of life dates:

Debian 9 “Stretch”: June 2022.
Debian 10: “Buster”: No date given as yet – based on previous releases our best guess is 2024.

Increased Speed:

By moving from Debian 8 to Debian 10 you should notice a speed increase due to the newer software.

Apache 2.4.10 -> Apache 2.4.38
PHP 5.x -> PHP 7.3
MySQL 5.6 / 5.7 -> MariaDB 10.3

Not sure where to start? Contact us to help with your migration.

Feature image by Loren Javier licensed by CC by 2.0

Python 2 will go end of life on 01 Jan 2020

9 Sep 2019/0 Comments/in Security/by Jim Carter

Quick Public Safety Announcement, Python 2.7 goes end of life 01 Jan 2020. This is the end of the road for Python 2.x – there won’t be a version 2.8.

This means any Python code that’s still on 2.x needs updating to Python 3. Any code that isn’t moved over won’t receive security updates so will inevitably become insecure.

Identify your code

If you’ve got a lot of code it’s worth taking the time to check what’s where and which version of Python it’s using.

Python 3 was released at the end of 2008. Adoption has been slow, a factor has been that all of your dependencies need to support Python 3 before you can. Now that we’re over 10 years down the road this is much less likely to be an issue.

You can start off by checking code that has been written more recently. Hopefully this will have been written for Python 3. A survey by JetBrains shows that between 2017 and 2018 the number of developers that mostly used Python 2 fell from 25% to just 16%. It’s also interesting to note the divide between use cases. Data science having better adoption than both web and dev-ops.

Don’t forget old code

Unfortunately the numbers above are for code that developers are writing now. We’re also concerned with code that was written many years ago and hasn’t recently had any major changes. Looking at the number of packages downloaded instead of what developers are mostly using gives a different picture. The numbers are closer to 50/50 with the trend between data science and dev-ops still clear. TensorFlow is most often downloaded for Python 3 whilst botocore is heavily Python 2. Boto is heavily used in API access to cloud providers such as AWS.

If all of your recent code is Python 3 it’s worth having a good dig around for places old code might be hiding.

What are the steps to update to Python 3?

The first step to update code is to make sure any packages you’re using support Python 3. A tool such as caniusepython3 should show you where the issues are.
After that depending on the complexity of your code you can update it by hand or use a tool such as Futurize to help with the conversion .

A key part of smoothly updating is to have a good testing process so you can quickly find and fix the bits that unexpectedly break. See the porting guide for more info.

Feature image by See1,Do1,Teach1 licensed CC BY 2.0.

PHP 7.1 will go end of life on 1 Dec 2019

30 Jul 2019/0 Comments/in Security/by Claire Christmas

PHP 7.1 goes end of life (EOL) on the 1st December 2019 meaning known security flaws will no longer be fixed and sites are exposed to significant security vulnerabilities.

It is important to update them to a newer version. We would recommend updating to either:

7.2 supported until 30 November 2020
7.3 supported until 6 December 2021

As with any upgrade you will want to test your site on the new version before migrating. You may need to get your developers to update some code, check plugins and app versions for the new PHP supportability.

If you love a pie chart, Jordi Boggiano has provided this great overview of the PHP versions out there.

Upgrade from PHP 7.1 before the 1st December 2019.

Want a hand? Get in touch!

How will the Ubuntu 14.04 EOL affect me?

30 Oct 2018/0 Comments/in Security/by Rob Hooper

On April 2019, Ubuntu 14.04 reaches end of life (EOL).
We recommend that you update to Ubuntu 18.04.

Over time technology and security evolves, new bugs are fixed and new threats prevented, so in order to maintain a secure infrastructure it is important to keep all software and systems up to date.

Operating systems are key to security, providing the libraries and technologies behind NGINX, Apache and anything else running your application. Old operating systems don’t support the latest technologies which new releases of software depend on, leading to compatibility issues.

Leaving old Ubuntu 14.04 systems past April 2019 leaves you at risk to:

Security vulnerabilities of the system in question
Making your network more vulnerable as a whole
Software incompatibility
Compliance issues (PCI)
Poor performance and reliability

Ubuntu End of life dates:

Ubuntu LTS (long term support) operating systems come with a 5 year End Of Life policy. This means that after 5 years it receives no maintenance updates including security updates.

Ubuntu 14.04 : April 2019
Ubuntu 16.04 : April 2021
Ubuntu 18.04 : April 2023

Faster:

Just picking up your files and moving them from Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 18.04 will speed up your site due to the new software.

Apache 2.4.7 -> Apache 2.4.29
NGINX 1.4.6 -> NGINX 1.14.0
MySQL 5.5 -> MySQL 5.7
PHP 5.5 -> PHP 7.2

Are you still using an old operating system?

Want to upgrade?

Not sure if this effects you?

Drop us a line and see what we can do for you!

Feature image by See1,Do1,Teach1 licensed CC BY 2.0.

PHP 5.6 will go end of life on 31 Dec 2018

2 Oct 2018/0 Comments/in Security/by Jim Carter

Quick Public Safety Announcement, PHP 5.6 goes end of life (EOL) on the 31 December 2018. This means that known security flaws will no longer be being fixed so any sites you have running on it will become vulnerable, hence it is important you update them to a newer version.

We recommend updating to the latest stable version (at the time of writing this is PHP 7.2). As this is a major upgrade you will want to test your site on the new version and may need to get your developers to update some code before moving over.

If you’re unsure if you are affected or want a hand upgrading? Get in touch!

Everyone loves a good graph and Jordi Boggiano has provided this great overview of the PHP versions out there in the wild!

Feature image by See1,Do1,Teach1 licensed CC BY 2.0.

How will Debian 7 end of life affect me?

8 May 2018/0 Comments/in Security/by Jim Carter

On 31st May 2018, Debian 7 “Wheezy” reaches end of life (EOL).
We recommend that you update to Debian 9 “Stretch”.

Over time technology and security evolves, new bugs are fixed and new threats prevented, so in order to maintain a secure infrastructure it is important to keep all software and systems up to date. Once an operating system reaches end of life it no longer receives updates so will end up left with known security holes.

Operating systems are key to security, providing the libraries and technologies behind NGINX, Apache and anything else running your application. Old operating systems don’t support the latest technologies which new releases of software depend on, leading to compatibility issues.

Leaving old Debian 7 systems past May 2018 leaves you at risk to:

Security vulnerabilities of the system in question
Making your network more vulnerable as a whole
Software incompatibility
Compliance issues (PCI)
Poor performance and reliability