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Security first with the Hiawatha web server

Small but Safe

Article from ADMIN 32/2016

By Hans-Cees Speel

The small but secure Hiawatha web server provides an appealing alternative to the complex Apache and other alternatives.

Security on the Internet is vital. The Hiawatha web server [1], created by Hugo Lensink, is a small (and free) web server that subscribes to the principle "security by default." This article shows how to install and use Hiawatha.

You'll get the most benefit from Hiawatha if you run web applications, such as a CMS or any PHP website that occasionally gets hit by vulnerabilities (and they all do, of course). Hiawatha adds an extra layer of security, delivering ready-to-use rewrite rules for different CMS options.

In comparison with Apache and Nginx, the Hiawatha configuration file is much more concise and easier to edit. Hiawatha makes it very easy to switch on the security features for a CMS, for example; whereas setting up security for a CMS in Nginx or Apache will require the additional work of configuring modules and rules and testing them. See the box titled "Pros and Cons" for a summary of Hiawatha benefits and costs.

Pros and Cons

Why use the Hiawatha web server?

Intrusion detection (IDS) and prevention tools are ready-to-use. On-board tools protect your sites from SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), denial of service (DOS), and other attacks. Hiawatha also supports banning; when it detects an attack, it bans the attacking IP address automatically, thus also slowing or stopping other attacks the intruder might be attempting.
Security by default. The default configuration file serves your TLS with perfect-forward-secrecy (PFS), does not use OpenSSL, and includes other safety features. The SSL Labs website gives Hiawatha an A-rating, where Apache has a C.
Lean. Hiawatha has a small footprint, so it is usable on old machines, or in my case, as a means for serving many websites on a new machine.
Easy to configure. Hiawatha has a

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