"The Famous WordPress 5-Minute Install" was great. Unfortunately, today it can cause serious security problems. The typical scenario is to upload core files to your host, open the installer, and it is done in a few minutes. During these few minutes is your installer publicly available to everyone. If the attacker is speedy enough, he … Continue reading WordPress installer attack race
WordCamp EU – Q&A
https://www.slideshare.net/vsmitka/wordpress-through-the-bad-guys-glasses How do I know that my PHP or Apache version is vulnerable? You can find vulnerabilities for the particular version on CVE details. You should use the lastest versions of server components, currently: Apache 2.4.39 (major version 2.2 is out of suport now)Nginx 1.16 (stable) or 1.17 (mainline)PHP 7.3.6 or 7.2.19 Also keep in … Continue reading WordCamp EU – Q&A
Enhance your CentOS security for $1 a month with autoupdates
How to enable security autoupdates properly on CentOS and why are the most tutorials wrong.
Python & Ruby webserver config – the great misunderstanding
Two months ago I ran a huge global scan for unintentionally exposed .git repositories. I was surprised to find many Python and Ruby applications with this issue. The total number wasn't very high - around two thousand, but when I normalized it according to the market share of these programming languages, the situation was worse … Continue reading Python & Ruby webserver config – the great misunderstanding
Open .git scan – the results
I published an artice about my latest security scan aimed to the exposed git repositories. The results: 230 000 000 domains checked (the list was build mainly from the Rapid 7 OpenData), 390 000 affected sites found, 100 000 alerts send. The most of affected sites use PHP: But after normalization the numbers according to the … Continue reading Open .git scan – the results
Restic – backup to the cloud
Few months ago we decided to change our backup workflow. I found an ultimate tool for backing up our web servers to Digital Ocean Spaces (object storage, cheaper then Amazon S3). Restic - backups done right! Main features: easy encrypted fast wide range of backends You can backup your files to local, via SFTP, Amazon … Continue reading Restic – backup to the cloud
Sensitive information in WP REST-API
There is REST-API integrated into WordPress from version 4.7. It is the way how we will use WP in future, but there are some downsides currently. The problem is, that WP use gravatars in default settings - you can find them in the comments and in user profiles. Both of them has their own endpoint … Continue reading Sensitive information in WP REST-API
MACsec on Centos 7
MACsec = Media Access Control Security (802.1AE IEEE). It provides point-to-point encryption (AES-GCM-128 by default) over ethernet traffic. MACsec support is included from kernel 4.6 or in Centos/RHEL 7. https://gist.github.com/lynt-smitka/b07eddbbd2279be17473fb9cdc99eb41
Slovak WordPress Environment
I scanned all slovak *.sk domains and prepared statistics about WordPress sites for my WordCamp Bratislava talk (2018-04-28). Source: Lynt.cz
WP comments antispam
Akismet is fine, but I decided to write a simple WordPress comments antispam for research resons. There are some proven methods to fight against spammy comments: honeypot field "nick", it is hidden by CSS - only bots will fill it block comments with BB code [url=...] HTTPBL (DNSBL) from http://www.projecthoneypot.org - you need API key Block comment … Continue reading WP comments antispam
Vladimir Smitka 