Hardening WordPress Security

WordPress is the most popular blogging and CMS system on the Internet which makes it a favorite target for hackers. Having a WordPress site means that you have to take some extra efforts in order to protect your and your visitors data hence hardening your WordPress deployment is mandatory.

We know from experience that having your site hacked is not fun. That’s why, here at WebHostingWorld, we take security very seriously.
In line with our serious approach to security, our products are carefully optimized to be as secure as possible. There are, however, still a handful of potential security risks, when running a website, that we have no control over. You, the website owner, need to pay attention to these potential security risks, in order to keep your website safe.

With that in mind, here are few things you can do to improve your WordPress security.

1. Update all the things

It is really important to keep your core WordPress files and all of your plugins, themes updated to their latest versions. Every new release of WordPress contains patches and fixes that address real or potential vulnerabilities. If you don’t keep your website updated with the latest version of WordPress, you could be leaving yourself open to attacks.

Many hackers will intentionally target older versions of WordPress with known security issues, so keep an eye on your Dashboard notification area and don’t ignore those ‘Please update now’ messages.

Don’t ignore this!

The latest version of WordPress is always available on official WordPress site. Official release is not available from other websites or resources, thus, NEVER update WordPress from third party resources. Also, you can easily update WordPress from Admin Dashboard directly

WordPress update

It is strongly recommended to update your plugins and themes to the latest versions too, as a bug in one of these can affect your whole installation. You can update both plugins and themes via Admin Dashboard > choose Plugins or Themes menu and click ‘Update now’ near the necessary plugin or theme:

plugins update

themes update

NOTE: it is recommended to create backups of your WordPress files and database before applying any changes.

2. Strengthen up those passwords

You will be surprised to know that there are thousands of people that use phrases like “password” or “123456” for their admin login details. Needles to say, such passwords can be easily guessed and they are on the top of the list of any dictionary attack.

The goal with your password is to make it hard for other people to guess and hard for a brute force attack to succeed. Many automatic password generators are available that can be used to create secure passwords.

https://identitysafe.norton.com/password-generator/

Things to avoid when choosing a password:

Any permutation of your own real name, username, company name, or name of your website.
A word from a dictionary, in any language.
A short password.
Any numeric-only or alphabetic-only password (a mixture of both is best)

3. Don’t use the “admin” username

The default WordPress login is ‘admin’ and most hackers know that. It should be changed to custom one with a strong password which include upper/lower keys, numbers and symbols. If you’re installing a new WordPress site, you will be asked for username during the WordPress installation process.

installing WordPress

If you have already installed WordPress you can still change username.The easiest way to change your WordPress username is by creating a new user with your desired username and with the administrator user role. You will need to use a different email address than the one used by the old account.

To add a new user on your WordPress site, simply click on Users » Add New and fill out the form.

add-new-user-wordpress

Add a new user with Administrator role, make sure you use a strong password.
Now you need to logout and then login with the new user account you just created.
Go to the Users section and click on the Delete link under your old username
add user

While deleting your old user, WordPress will ask what you want to do with their content. Make sure that you click on ‘Attribute all content to:’ option and then select the new user you just created. Click on the ‘Confirm Deletion’ button to delete the old user account.

delete user

That’s all you have successfully changed your WordPress username

4. Protect your WordPress Admin Area

Keeping “wp-admin” folder protected adds an extra layer of protection. Whoever attempts to access files or directory after “wp-admin” will be prompt to login.

Protecting your “wp-admin” folder with login and password can be done in several ways:

4.1. WordPress plugin

Using the WordPress AskApache Password Protect plugin.

4.2. cPanel

You can set protection easily on any folder via cPanel’s Password Protect Directories

Go to cPanel > Security > Password Protect Directories to access a list of your site’s folders:

Password Protect Directories

Choose the directory you wish to protect and click on it

Password Protect Directories

Put a tick on Password protect this directory and name your protected directory, insert the username and password and click on Add or Modify the Authorized User button to save your changes:

4.3. .htaccess + htpasswd

Creating a password-protected folder can also be done easily by setting the folders you want to protect inside .htaccess and users allowed to access inside .htpasswd.

The best you can do is to get our home IP address (you can use a site like whatismyip.com for that) and add these lines to the .htaccess file in your WordPress admin folder replacing xx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your IP address.

<Files wp-login.php>
order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx
</Files>
In case you want to allow access to multiple computers (like your office, home PC, laptop, etc.), simply add another Allow from xx.xxx.xxx.xxx statement on a new line.

5. Securing wp-config.php

It is very important to protect wp-config.php file and wp-admin folder since they are more susceptible for hacker attack.

Move wp-config.php outside of the web directory (eg. one directory up). WordPress knows to look for the file in other directories if it can’t find it in the web directory.

The trouble is, if a hacker managed to gain access to your admin panel, they could also edit your files that way, and execute whatever code they wanted to.

So it’s a good idea to disable this method of file editing, by adding the following to your wp-config.php file. You can put this in that file (at the very top) to deny access to anyone surfing for it:

<files wp-config.php>
order allow,deny
deny from all
</files>

The WordPress Dashboard by default allows administrators to edit PHP files, such as plugin and theme files. This is often the first tool an attacker will use if able to login, since it allows code execution. WordPress has a constant to disable editing from Dashboard. Placing this line in wp-config.php is equivalent to removing the ‘edit_themes’, ‘edit_plugins’ and ‘edit_files’ capabilities of all users:

define(‘DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT’,true);

6.Changing database prefix

Your website might be at stake if you are using the predictable wp_ prefixes in your database.

This one can be difficult to do but it is the absolute most critical. By default, WordPress prefixes all its database tables “wp_”. Changing the table prefix to a random string makes it difficult if not impossible for a hacker to execute remote SQL injection attacks.

If you haven’t installed WordPress yet, then during installation you can change the table prefix to the random string you generated previously. Make sure you add an underscore ( _ ) after the string so your tables are easier to read.

changing table prefix

If you have already installed WordPress you can still change database prefix in two ways: either manually or using a special plugin.

For manual database prefix change, go to cPanel > phpMyAdmin menu > choose the necessary database from the left side > click on SQL option above.

Here you need to run RENAME SQL queries on tables in your WordPress database:

RENAME table `wp_commentmeta` TO `newprefix_commentmeta`;
RENAME table `wp_comments` TO `newprefix_comments`;
RENAME table `wp_links` TO `newprefix_links`;
RENAME table `wp_options` TO `newprefix_options`;
RENAME table `wp_postmeta` TO `newprefix_postmeta`;
RENAME table `wp_posts` TO `newprefix_posts`;
RENAME table `wp_terms` TO `newprefix_terms`;
RENAME table `wp_term_relationships` TO `newprefix_term_relationships`;
RENAME table `wp_term_taxonomy` TO `newprefix_term_taxonomy`;
RENAME table `wp_usermeta` TO `newprefix_usermeta`;
RENAME table `wp_users` TO `newprefix_users`;

*where newprefix_ should be replaced with new database prefix you wish to have instead of wp_, then click Go:

sql query

Once done, you will see the new database prefix has been applied to your WordPress database:

table prefix

After that you will need to search the options table for any other fields that is using wp_ as a prefix in order to replace them. It is necessary to run the following query in the same way:

SELECT * FROM `newprefix_options` WHERE `option_name` LIKE ‘%wp_%’

options table

Then click Go and you will get the result as on the screenshot below:

table prefix

Here you will need to go one by one to change these lines and replace the old database prefix with the new one. Once done, we need to search the usermeta for all fields that is using wp_ as a prefix with the help of this SQL query:

SELECT * FROM `newprefix_usermeta` WHERE `meta_key` LIKE ‘%wp_%’

sql query

After that click Go and the following results will appear:

changing database prefix

Number of entries may vary on how many plugins you are using and such. Here you need to change everything that has wp_ to the new prefix as well.

Once done, make sure to update your wp-config.php file with new database prefix:

changing database prefix in wp-config.php

Also, you can change database prefix using special plugins, like Change DB prefix or Change table prefix.

7. Plugins For Better Security

7.1. WP DB Backup

WP DB Backup is an easy to use plugin which lets you backup your core WordPress database tables just by a few clicks. Besides it is so easy, it
has also been one of the most used plugin to secure your WP-powered website.

7.2. WP Security Scan

With this plugin, scanning your WordPress-powered site will be a simple task. It finds the vulnerabilities in your site and offer useful tips on removing them.

7.3. User Locker

If you want to avoid brute-force hacking your site, then the User Locker plugin is right for you. It works on the same system as Login
Lockdown, however, it’s a 5-stars rated WP plugin which has a great fame among its users. With this plugin, scanning your WordPress-powered site will be a simple task. It finds the vulnerabilities in your site and offer useful tips on
removing them.

8. Keeping the backups

Back up your data regularly, including your MySQL databases. A sound backup strategy could include keeping a set of regularly-timed snapshots of your entire WordPress installation (including WordPress core files and your database) in a trusted location.

The following is a very simple version of how to use phpMyAdmin to back up your WordPress database.

1. Click on Databases in your phpMyAdmin panel. (It may not be necessary to do this, depending on your version of phpMyAdmin)

database backup

You may have several databases. Click the one that holds your WordPress data, the database you created when you installed WordPress.
Below is a picture of the default tables in the Structure view tab. You may have more tables — this would happen if you have any statistics plugins or anti-spam plugins.

database structure

Click Export. There are two methods to export, Quick and Custom; if you choose Custom, follow these steps:

1.1. Select all the tables.
1.2. In the Output section check Save output to a file and select None for Compression. (If your database is very large use a compression method)
1.3. Select SQL from the Format drop-down menu.
1.4. Check “Add DROP TABLE”: this can be useful for over-writing an existing database.
1.5. Check “IF NOT EXISTS”: this prevents errors during restores if the tables are already there.
1.6. Click Go. The data will now be saved into your computer.

Keep these files safe, copied and stored in separate places on separate media.

The tips provided above do not guarantee 100% secure of your WordPress website, however, they drastically decrease chances of getting hacked. We sincerely hope this article helped you enough in securing your online business and becoming a trouble-free and happy customer.

Learn about robots.txt file

The robots exclusion protocol (REP), or robots.txt is a text file webmasters create to instruct robots (typically search engine robots) how to crawl and index pages on their website.
Robots.txt is a text (not html) file you put on your site to tell search robots which pages you would like them not to visit. Robots.txt is by no
means mandatory for search engines but generally search engines obey what they are asked not to do. It is important to clarify that robots.txt
is not a way from preventing search engines from crawling your site (i.e. it is not a firewall, or a kind of password protection) and the fact that
you put a robots.txt file is something like putting a note “Please, do not enter” on an unlocked door – e.g. you cannot prevent thieves from
coming in but the good guys will not open to door and enter. That is why we say that if you have really sensitive data, it is too naïve to
rely on robots.txt to protect it from being indexed and displayed in search results.

robots.txt

When a search engine crawls (visits) your website, the first thing it looks for is your robots.txt file. This file tells search engines what they should and should not index (save and make available as search results to the public). It also may indicate the location of your XML sitemap.

Google’s official stance on the robots.txt file

Robots.txt file consists of lines which contain two fields: line with a user-agent name (search engine crawlers) and one or several lines starting
with the directive

How to create a robots.txt file

You will need to create it in the top-level directory of your web server.

When a robot looks for the “/robots.txt” file for URL, it strips the path component from the URL (everything from the first single slash), and puts “/robots.txt” in its place.

For example, for “http://www.example.com/shop/index.html, it will remove the “/shop/index.html“, and replace it with “/robots.txt“, and will end up with “http://www.example.com/robots.txt”.

So, as a web site owner you need to put it in the right place on your web server for that resulting URL to work. Usually that is the same place where you put your web site’s main “index.html” welcome page. Where exactly that is, and how to put the file there, depends on your web server software.

Remember to use all lower case for the filename: “robots.txt“, not “Robots.TXT.

You can simply create a blank file and name it robots.txt. This will reduce site errors and allow all search engines to rank anything they want.

Here’s a simple robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /

1. The first line explains which agent (crawler) the rule applies to. In this case, User-agent: * means the rule applies to every crawler.

2. The subsequent lines set what paths can (or cannot) be indexed. Allow: /wp-content/uploads/allows crawling through your uploads folder (images) and Disallow: / means no file or page should be indexed aside from what’s been allowed previously. You can have multiple rules for a given crawler.

3. The rules for different crawlers can be listed in sequence, in the same file.

Examples of usage

robots-allow-all

Prevent the whole site from indexation by all web crawlers:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Allow all web crawlers to index the whole site:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Prevent only several directories from indexation:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/

Prevent site’s indexation by a specific web crawler:

User-agent: Bot1
Disallow: /

Robots.txt for WordPress

Running WordPress, you want search engines to crawl and index your posts and pages, but not your core WP files and directories. You also want to make sure that feeds and trackbacks aren’t included in the search results. It’s also good practice to declare a sitemap. So in case you didn’t create yet a real robots.txt, create one with any text editor and upload it to the root directory of your server via FTP.

Blocking main WordPress Directories

There are 3 standard directories in every WordPress installation – wp-content, wp-admin, wp-includes that don’t need to be indexed.

Don’t choose to disallow the whole wp-content folder though, as it contains an ‘uploads’ subfolder with your site’s media files that you don’t want to be blocked. That’s why you need to proceed as follows:

User-Agent: *
# disallow all files in these directories
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/

Miscellaneous remarks
Don’t list all your files in the robots.txt file. Listing the files allows people to find files that you don’t want them to find.
Don’t block CSS, Javascript and other resource files by default. This prevents Google bot from properly rendering the page and understanding that your site is mobile-optimized
An incorrect robots.txt file can block Googlebot from indexing your page
Put your most specific directives first, and your more inclusive ones (with wildcards) last

Magento Security Update

Magento recently released a security update that fixes many vulnerabilities found in their software. If you are running a Magento installation without patch SUPEE-6285 we highly recommend you update immediately:

https://www.magentocommerce.com/products/downloads/magento/

If you are a customer with us, we will be in contact if this issue affects your account.

For more information on the security vulnerabilities fixed in this update, please visit the following link:

http://merch.docs.magento.com/ee/user_guide/Magento_Enterprise_Edition_User_Guide.html#magento/patch-releases-2015.html

Server-Side Scripting – Pros and Cons

During the early years of the internet, users were presented with what are called static web pages; basic HTML pages that appear exactly the same for every user. As the internet developed, the need grew for dynamic web pages, which appear differently for individual users, for example, users who log in to a site will see different content depending on their status, preferences or previous activity.

Dynamic pages also allow content to be displayed differently for different devices and they can be updated in real time, such as showing which products are in your shopping basket or the latest score in a football match.

To enable a web page to display dynamic content for different users and devices requires scripting. Scripting is the process whereby the interactive elements of a web page are retrieved from the website’s database or other data stores on the site’s server. There are two types of scripting which can occur: server-side scripting and client side scripting. Server side scripting means the information needed to create the dynamic page is done on the web server before being sent to the user. This is done using scripting languages such as PHP, ASP.NET and Python. Client side scripting means the script is sent to the web browser and the browser uses that script to procure and collate the page’s content on the user’s device.

Advantages of Server-Side Scripting:

√ In order for client side scripting to work, browsers need plugins and scripting technologies like JavaScript to compile all the information. This increases the load on the user’s computer and can lead to problems such as slow loading, high CPU usage and even freezing – especially if it is an older computer. Server-side scripting prevents this from happening.

√ Some browsers don’t fully support Javascript, so server-side scripting is essential to run dynamic pages on these browsers.

√ Server-side scripting languages like PHP can be configured to run CMS applications, like WordPress and Joomla. This allows CMS users to easily create and update content on the web without the need for coding.

√ Server-side scripting often reduces the loading time for web pages which can improve the Google ranking of your site and prevent users leaving because of issues with site speed.

√ As the scripting takes place on the server, the script itself is not sent to the browser, this prevents it being copied, cloned or scrutinised for hacking vulnerabilities.

√ Server-side scripting offers greater protection for user privacy and is the preferred option for e-commerce, membership and social media sites.

Disadvantages of Server-Side Scripting:

√ Scripting puts increased demands on a website’s server. Websites using large applications and with heavy traffic may need to utilise more powerful hosting methods such as dedicated servers or cloud hosting to cope with demand.

√ Server-side scripting requires pages to be refreshed in order to show the dynamic content – you will most often see this when you use server-side scripting to log in to a site. However, developers now use a newer method of exchanging data with a server, called Ajax, and this allows web pages to be updated without the need to reload the entire content.

√ Server-side scripting requires a database in order to store the dynamic data. This is not an issue in itself, but the database will need backing up regularly and will need to be kept secure.

The majority of websites now use dynamic content, much of which is managed using server-side scripting. Without server-side scripting the functionality of the internet as we know it today would just not exist.

The Official Web Hosting World Blog

The Official Web Hosting World Blog

Scripting

Hardening WordPress Security

Learn about robots.txt file

Magento Security Update

Server-Side Scripting – Pros and Cons