Secure HTML Pages in Wordpress CMS

To get started securing a WordPress install try the excellent guide on the of the WordPress site is to check the HTML source of the page for a.
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The project is aimed to offer open source or free resources instead of commercial ones. Some plugins have a free version and a paid one that offers extra functionality. In such cases, the focus of the project was on the free version. There are plenty of good resources to help anyone accomplish security basics. The following is a list of items that needs to be taken into account when securing the devices that will be accessing the WordPress instances. Some of them may refer to PCs and mobile devices, others just to one of the devices.

Before hardening the core of WordPress an implementer must consider hardening the services on which the instance will be installed. Sometimes the underlying infrastructure is not under the control of the implementer. While there are things that can be hardened on WordPress to mitigate things that are supposed to be fixed on the infrastructure side, one should always consider defense in depth. The implementer can contact the infrastructure administrator and ask for specific hardening in order to further protect the applications that will be installed on top of that, in this case WordPress.

The foundation of infrastructure hardening is operating system hardening. This is a broad subject and highly dependent on the OS, the main concerns being around privileges, access control, authentication and logging. WordPress can be installed on a multitude of platforms but the main focus below is on the most common components, Apache and MySQL. The general rules though apply to all supported infrastructure components.


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Following best design practices, the tiers of the WordPress instance should be separated. However the presentation and application layers of WordPress are bound together. Thus only one separation is possible, the one with the database. As was the case with general security, this is just a list of things that should be performed in order to harden the infrastructure and not the means to do it.

The main action items are:. A PHP security checker is available here. This is a one-page php file designed to analyze PHP configuration and rank the findings based on severity. There are three main components of WordPress that need to be considered from a security perspective when implementing the solution. It is of vital importance to keep WordPress core, plugins and themes updated. Once an update is released, it needs to be applied as soon as possible to close any security holes.

Functional problems with updates must be considered. It is possible that an update will break some of the functionality so a backup is recommended before updating the core. Starting with version 3. This default behavior can be overridden by editing the wp-config. When set to true all updates will be enabled.

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Translations are updated by default with the minor core updates. The themes and plugins can be updated automatically using filters. The best place to put a filter is in a must-use plugin. Depending on the server configuration, the files in the WordPress folder can be accessed from the Internet regardless of whether they are used or not. Even if a plugin is disabled, the files are still there and they are accessible from the Internet. When a new vulnerability is discovered, the attackers write scripts to look for the vulnerable files.

Knowing the location of vulnerable plugins increases their chances of infiltrating a vulnerable instance. Plugins and themes are a great addition to the functionality offered by the WordPress core. This ease of development comes with the security downside. In the rush for functionality, the developers often forget about security. Developing on top of WordPress should be regarded as a regular development job and follow a standard secure development lifecycle. Concrete action items for this chapter include source code review and penetration testing of plugins and themes. When choosing to use an already developed plugin by a 3 rd party, a security audit should be performed.

Good differentiators for available plugins are:. The backup process is essential. The configuration of the backup process can make the distinction between a clean and fast recovery or a loss of data and prolonged downtime. However there are situations in which this is not feasible nor enough. There are situations in which large quantities of data is generated in the public folder statistics, temporary data, etc. They also need backup. The plan is to identify the files and folders that must be part of the backup process and save these in a remote location.

For database backup, the mysql command line can be used or administrative interfaces like phpMyAdmin.

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How often should the backup be performed? It all depends on how often the instance is updated from a content perspective. This is because a breach might not be noticed immediately and a clean recovery can only be performed from a backup which is several iterations old. Verifying that the backup is functional is part of the process. A backup that does not allow quick and full recovery is useless. The idea is to have a clean server and perform a full recovery from the backup, then check all the functionality and make sure nothing is missing.

The steps above are manual and labor intensive. There is a full list of plugins that can help this process: The one free alternative offering full backup capabilities that stands out of the list is BackWPup. As a good precaution, on the remote side where the backups are stored, an independent process should take the backups and move them to a location inaccessible from the WordPress installation. Understanding the roles and properly assigning them to users is essential in the segregation of duties process.

A full list of privileges and a comparison between roles is available at http: Restricting the access to the admin interface should be considered as no regular user is in need of access to this area. For a site with few users it makes sense to whitelist their IP addresses.

WP Static Site Generator

Additionally, the access can be restricted only to the localhost and have the users VPN in or create a tunnel to the server if SSH is enabled and then access the admin interface. To restrict the access to the wp-admin folder, a file called. The content of the file should be:. Brute-forcing is the easy way in for an attacker. As discussed in the General Security chapter, a prerequisite for preventing bruteforcing is to have strong passwords. The advantage of this plugin is that it can be used to add the extra layer of protection on other areas as well like registration and comments.

Another preventive measure is to lock-out accounts after a series of failed attempts. There is no plugin at the moment that can lock a user after several failed attempts for a period of time, there are plugins blocking IP addresses that are brute-forcing the login mechanism. This approach is not the best when dealing with distributed attacks. To add another layer of security on the authentication mechanism, two factor authentication can be enabled. Two factor authentication is a method of securing accounts requiring that you not only know something a password to log in but also that you possess something your mobile device.

This commitment means that themes, plugins, and custom code continues to function when WordPress core software is updated, encouraging site owners to keep their WordPress version updated to the latest secure release. The WordPress Security Team is made up of approximately 50 experts including lead developers and security researchers — about half are employees of Automattic makers of WordPress.

The team consults with well-known and trusted security researchers and hosting companies 3. This vulnerability resolution was a result of a joint effort by both WordPress and Drupal security teams. The WordPress Security Team believes in Responsible Disclosure by alerting the security team immediately of any potential vulnerabilities. The Security Team communicates amongst itself via a private Slack channel, and works on a walled-off, private Trac for tracking, testing, and fixing bugs and security problems.

Each security report is acknowledged upon receipt, and the team works to verify the vulnerability and determine its severity. If confirmed, the security team then plans for a patch to fix the problem which can be committed to an upcoming release of the WordPress software or it can be pushed as an immediate security release, depending on the severity of the issue. For an immediate security release, an advisory is published by the Security Team to the WordPress. Credit for the responsible disclosure of a vulnerability is given in the advisory to encourage and reinforce continued responsible reporting in the future.

Administrators of the WordPress software see a notification on their site dashboard to upgrade when a new release is available, and following the manual upgrade users are redirected to the About WordPress screen which details the changes. If administrators have automatic background updates enabled, they will receive an email after an upgrade has been completed. Starting with version 3. The WordPress Security Team can identify, fix, and push out automated security enhancements for WordPress without the site owner needing to do anything on their end, and the security update will install automatically.

When a security update is pushed for the current stable release of WordPress, the core team will also push security updates for all the releases that are capable of background updates since WordPress 3.

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Individual site owners can opt to remove automatic background updates through a simple change in their configuration file, but keeping the functionality is strongly recommended by the core team, as well as running the latest stable release of WordPress. The OWASP Top 10 list 8 focuses on identifying the most serious application security risks for a broad array of organizations. The Top 10 items are selected and prioritized in combination with consensus estimates of exploitability, detectability, and impact estimates.

The following sections discuss the APIs, resources, and policies that WordPress uses to strengthen the core software and 3rd party plugins and themes against these potential risks. There is a set of functions and APIs available in WordPress to assist developers in making sure unauthorized code cannot be injected, and help them validate and sanitize data.

Administrators can also further restrict the types of file which can be uploaded via filters. WordPress core software manages user accounts and authentication and details such as the user ID, name, and password are managed on the server-side, as well as the authentication cookies. Passwords are protected in the database using standard salting and stretching techniques. Existing sessions are destroyed upon logout for versions of WordPress after 4.

WordPress provides a range of functions which can help ensure that user-supplied data is safe Trusted users, that is administrators and editors on a single WordPress installation, and network administrators only in WordPress Multisite, can post unfiltered HTML or JavaScript as they need to, such as inside a post or page.

As an example, the WordPress core team noticed before the release of WordPress 2. WordPress often provides direct object reference, such as unique numeric identifiers of user accounts or content available in the URL or form fields.

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The majority of the WordPress security configuration operations are limited to a single authorized administrator. Default settings for WordPress are continually evaluated at the core team level, and the WordPress core team provides documentation and best practices to tighten security for server configuration for running a WordPress site WordPress checks for proper authorization and permissions for any function level access requests prior to the action being executed.

Access or visualization of administrative URLs, menus, and pages without proper authentication is tightly integrated with the authentication system to prevent access from unauthorized users. WordPress uses cryptographic tokens, called nonces 13 , to validate intent of action requests from authorized users to protect against potential CSRF threats. WordPress provides an API for the generation of these tokens to create and verify unique and temporary tokens, and the token is limited to a specific user, a specific action, a specific object, and a specific time period, which can be added to forms and URLs as needed.

OWASP Wordpress Security Implementation Guideline

Additionally, all nonces are invalidated upon logout. The WordPress core team closely monitors the few included libraries and frameworks WordPress integrates with for core functionality. In the past the core team has made contributions to several third-party components to make them more secure, such as the update to fix a cross-site vulnerability in TinyMCE in WordPress 3.

If necessary, the core team may decide to fork or replace critical external components, such as when the SWFUpload library was officially replaced by the Plupload library in 3. Additionally, access is only allowed to certain standard HTTP ports. WordPress requires a theme to be enabled to render content visible on the frontend.

The default theme which ships with core WordPress currently "Twenty Seventeen" has been vigorously reviewed and tested for security reasons by both the team of theme developers plus the core development team. The default theme can serve as a starting point for custom theme development, and site developers can create a child theme which includes some customization but falls back on the default theme for most functionality and security. The default theme can be easily removed by an administrator if not needed. These themes and plugins are submitted for inclusion and are manually reviewed by volunteers before making them available on the repository.

Inclusion of plugins and themes in the repository is not a guarantee that they are free from security vulnerabilities. Guidelines are provided for plugin authors to consult prior to submission for inclusion in the repository 17 , and extensive documentation about how to do WordPress theme development 18 is provided on the WordPress.


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Each plugin and theme has the ability to be continually developed by the plugin or theme owner, and any subsequent fixes or feature development can be uploaded to the repository and made available to users with that plugin or theme installed with a description of that change. Site administrators are notified of plugins which need to be updated via their administration dashboard. When a plugin vulnerability is discovered by the WordPress Security Team, they contact the plugin author and work together to fix and release a secure version of the plugin. The Theme Review Team is a group of volunteers, led by key and established members of the WordPress community, who review and approve themes submitted to be included in the official WordPress Theme directory.

Inclusion in the group is moderated by core committers of the WordPress development team. WordPress can be installed on a multitude of platforms. Though WordPress core software provides many provisions for operating a secure web application, which were covered in this document, the configuration of the operating system and the underlying web server hosting the software is equally important to keep the WordPress applications secure. This document refers to security regarding the self-hosted, downloadable open source WordPress software available from WordPress.

Together, these form the project interface which allows plugins and themes to interact with, alter, and extend WordPress core functionality safely and securely. The Filesystem API abstracts out the functionality needed for reading and writing local files to the filesystem to be done securely, on a variety of host types. The API standardizes requests, tests each method prior to sending, and, based on your server configuration, uses the appropriate method to make the request. The text in this document not including the WordPress logo or trademark is licensed under CC0 1.

You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Skip to content Learn more about WordPress core software security in this free white paper. Overview This document is an analysis and explanation of the WordPress core software development and its related security processes, as well as an examination of the inherent security built directly into the software.