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OpenX Source v2.8.8 released for download

November 5, 2011 By

Users of OpenX Source started receiving notifications about the release of a new version of the software earlier today, when they log in as a system administrator. It is the generic message that’s always used to announce new versions, but the message says specifically:

It is highly recommended to install this update as soon as possible, because it contains a number of security fixes.

There is no news about this new release on the OpenX community forums or blog, as of yet. The readme file that comes with the downloaded file does not contain any specific information as to the nature of the security issues that have been fixed. However, a quick comparison of the source code of version 2.8.7 and version 2.8.8 reveals that there are multiple changes in the API, which seems to match reports about the origins of many hacking incidents that occurred these past few months.

You can download OpenX Source version 2.8.8 from the OpenX website.

Update November 8, 2011: Since many people are asking me for tips on how to upgrade their OpenX Source software, I’d like to point to an blog post I published in November, 2010: How to upgrade OpenX Source Ad Server software.

Update December 2nd, 2011: Yesterday, a post has been added to the OpenX official company blog, officially announcing this security fix release. It also specifically mentions that the security fixes relate to issues found in OpenX Source version 2.8.7, which indicates that versions 2.8.6 and earlier are not affected. However, it is always a good idea to upgrade to the most recent version available. Read the post “Security matters” on the OpenX blog for more information.

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Filed Under: News, Upgrading Tagged With: , , ,

Fix for Contract Campaign Under Delivery Problem (Part 2)

March 7, 2011 By

In December 2009, I wrote a blog post about a fix for the contract campaign under delivery problems that many people experienced at the time. Back then, OpenX version 2.8.2 was the most recent release. The fix didn’t make it into OpenX v2.8.3 security fix version that was released just before Christmas 2009, but it was incorporated in all later releases.

The developer who created this fix, Matteo Beccati, continued working on the issues that many people reported with contract campaigns that wouldn’t get the required number of impressions, even when there was more than enough traffic available.

A second fix, a follow up to the earlier fix, has been released in June 2010, but I never got around to mentioning it here on the site. The bug report and fix can be downloaded from the OpenX developer zone.

Update March 10, 2011: I’ve had the opportunity to test this second part of the fix in a real-life situation for one of my clients. There was a contract campaign that was seriously under delivering, doing only about 11,000 impressions per day where it needed at least 15,000 per day to reach its target by the end date. After the patch was implemented, the probability percentages of the campaign’s banners in the zones it was linked to immediately increased and the campaign has started to compensate for the lower impression numbers before. It looks very plausible that it will reach its target at the end of the duration.

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Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

What happened to OpenX 3.0?

December 17, 2010 By

One year ago, on December 16, 2009, I met with OpenX CTO John Linden and OpenX Vice President of Enterprise Sales Mike Downey, during their stay in The Netherlands. They were visiting several countries and companies in Europe that week and I had the opportunity to sit down with them in a cafe in the center of Amsterdam for almost 2 hours.
[Read more...]

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Filed Under: General, News, OpenX Community Hosted, OpenX Enterprise Hosted Tagged With: ,

Update about security of OpenX software

September 22, 2010 By

In recent weeks, many stories have been published about security issues regarding the OpenX Ad Server software. Please find below some additional information on the current situation regarding the security of the OpenX software.

The most recent and most severe issues all resulted from a security problem in a third party open source component named “Open Flash Charts 2″. This component is used in the Video Ads plugin that comes with OpenX v2.8.4 and higher. The problem has been corrected with the release of OpenX v2.8.7. Instead of performing a full upgrade, a much simpler task is to just upgrade the Video Ads plugin. If you run OpenX version 2.8.3, which doesn’t have the Video ads plugin, you will not be affected by this particular issue.

There is also a smaller but still significant issue in the OpenX core software. It affects all version of the OpenX v2.8 software, up to v2.8.5 and it is relatively easy to fix. The way to do that is outlined in an OpenX forum post. Applying this patch is not complicated, but it does require some skill in editing php software files.

You can find out which version of OpenX you have by looking at the source code of any page of your OpenX system, including the login page. The version number is displayed in line 4 of that source code.

To summarize the above:

  • if you run OpenX v2.8.2 or older, an upgrade to version 2.8.3 would be recommended, including a patch for the security issue that was discovered in August.
  • if you run OpenX v2.8.3, applying the security patch that was published in August should be sufficient.
  • if you run OpenX v2.8.4 or higher, it would be smart to upgrade the Video Ads plugin, and apply the patch for the security issue, or to upgrade to OpenX v2.8.7.
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Filed Under: Installation, News, OpenX plugins, Upgrading Tagged With: ,

OpenX Ad Server v2.8.7 released

September 16, 2010 By

OpenX Ad Server v2.8.7 released for download

A new version of the OpenX Ad Server software has been released. This version 2.8.7 fixes a very serious security issue. According to the announcement on the OpenX blog:

there is a vulnerability in the 2.8 downloadable version of OpenX that can result in a server running the downloaded version of OpenX being compromised.

The issue stems from the Video Ads plugin for OpenX, which in turn uses an open source third party component called Open Flash Charts (OFC) to display graphs about video ad performance. There was a security issue with OFC which has now been fixed.

In addition, the upgrade notification inside the OpenX management pages has this information:

If you recently upgraded to version 2.8.6, you can simply install an upgraded video ad plug-in available [here] or remove the following file: admin/plugins/videoReport/lib/ofc2/ofc_upload_image.php from your installation.

This is the second update in less than 1 week, which might sound alarming. On the other hand, there will always be bugs and security vulnerabilities in software, and it’s better to have those fixed.

Besides this fix for the security issue that was uncovered, there is also a seemingly small functional change in this new version:

For users in the UK, all market interfaces now reflect your participation in Orange Ad Market, and all Orange Ad Market market monetary values are in GBP.

Since both the OpenX main website and the OpenX blog appear to be down at the time I’m writing this, I can’t give you any more information than what I included above.

What does still seem to work at the moment is the download link at http://download.openx.org/openx-2.8.7.zip.

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Filed Under: News, Upgrading Tagged With: , , ,

OpenX Statistics as Graphs plugin updated (v1.0.3)

September 13, 2010 By

The team at AdserverPlugins.com is releasing an update of the free Statistics as Graphs plugin for the OpenX Ad Server. This version 1.0.3 is available for download right now.

This is a security fix release that takes care of one issue:

  • A vulnerability has been discovered in the third-party open source graphing component Open Flash Charts that is used by this plugin to draw the graphs.

As always with security fix releases, it is crucial to upgrade to the newest version as soon as possible.

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OpenX Ad Server v2.8.6 released (or not?)

September 9, 2010 By

Note: this is a cross-post from my contribution at OpenXtips.com yesterday.

OpenX Ad Server v2.8.6 released for download

OpenX Ad Server v2.8.6 released for download

Just like in March 2010, a new version of the OpenX software has been released recently, but not a single byte of publicity has been devoted to it. No mention on the OpenX blog or on Twitter, nothing. Judging from the dates on the files in the download archive, the new release was completed on September 2nd of 2010, so almost a week ago.

This new version 2.8.6 seems to be mostly about the security issue that was found and fixed a few weeks ago. Back then, on August 12, a somewhat cryptic announcement was posted on the OpenX forums, informing people how to fix the security problem. That post also hinted at a new release that would be out soon.

The release notes file in the 2.8.6 archive points to the OpenX Developer site for more details, but the issue tracker for version 2.8.6 is still open and most issues in it are still marked as unresolved. And the version check inside the OpenX software doesn’t give any notifications about upgrade availability.

Altogether, this is a pretty strange situation. Obviously, it’s smart to upgrade to a new version as soon as it’s released, especially if the upgrade is about fixing security issues. On the other hand, what should we think about a release that is not announced in any way, shape or form?

Download the OpenX Community edition v2.8.6.

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OpenX Statistics as Graphs plugin updated (v1.0.2)

August 12, 2010 By
OpenX Statistics as Graphs plugin

OpenX Statistics as Graphs plugin

The team at AdserverPlugins.com have released an update of the free Statistics as Graphs plugin for the OpenX Ad Server. This version 1.0.2 is available for download right now.

They’re also reporting that this plugin has been downloaded over 1,000 times to date.

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New version of OpenX Reference Guide

August 9, 2010 By

I have updated the OpenX Reference Guide that I created a few years ago. It’s completely up to date again, so that it matches the current release of the OpenX Ad Server software.

This 32 page guide provides a comprehensive description of the OpenX Ad Server, an explanation of all important concepts and terminology, and a detailed description of the process of creating advertisers, campaigns, banners, websites and zones. Next there is a section on more advanced subjects, including the algorithm for the calculation of ‘probabilities’ and targeting of banners.

download Download: OpenX Reference Guide

Version: 1.0
Updated: August 7, 2010
Size: 312.56 KB
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Filed Under: Inventory Management, News, OpenX Ad Operations, Statistics, Targeting Tagged With: ,

OpenX.org website is down

August 8, 2010 By

I received an e-mail from someone mentioning that my homepage is really slow. When I went in to investigate, I found out that this is caused by the fact that the RSS feed from the OpenX weblog is not responding. That’s not all, the whole www.openx.org website, including their blog at blog.openx.org and the community forum at forum.openx.org also seem to be down.

Luckily, the hosted ad server infrastructure at OpenX (like adserver.openx.org) runs on separate hardware and does not seem to be affected by this incident.

The OpenX System Performance page at status.openx.org does still respond, but it does not show any notifications about their main site and blog being down.

Update 16.36 UTC: the OpenX website, blog and forum are back up again.

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