Security Threat: WordPress Under Attack

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/05/security-threat-wordpress-under-attack/

by GVRV • 17 years ago

28 25 17 years ago

patio112• 17 years ago

I'll admit, this got me to do a quick sweep of my dozen or so WP blogs and make sure they were all updated. That said, I think its likely we're seeing TechCrunch Journalism (TM) in action.

Wordpress security is a pain in the keister, though. You can reduce your risk by:

1) Making regular backups (I like automysqlbackup.sh.) Comprehensive compromise of a Wordpress installation is only really recoverable by wiping and starting over, unless you want to find that your forgotten posts from 3 years ago are linking to viagra pharmacies.

2) Putting every Wordpress installation in its own DB with its own DB user. Don't use root. I have a script which installs WP for me and creates the new DB, creates the new user, and gives the user an insanely difficult password because it will never actually be typed by a human.

3) Making sure the Wordpress directories can't get written to by the server. I go as far as blocking the uploads, which means I have to do some chmod magic when uploading things.

4) If you can put up with the nuisance, protect the wp-admin directory at the web server level, for example by denying all IPs but your own, or by putting it under HTTP Basic authentication. That will cut down drastically on the number of automated probes that hit you. You don't have to run faster than the tiger, you just have to run faster than the other guy the tiger is chasing...

ionfish2• 17 years ago

Regarding your point #4, it's also worth securing the admin area to only be accessible over HTTPS. I also prefer HTTP Digest authentication to Basic.

nuclear_eclipse• 17 years ago

do a quick sweep of my dozen or so WP blogs and make sure they were all updated

If you install and set up Wordpress Mu [1], you can run all those blogs off of a single installation, and then not only do you have a contralized install to manage plugins and themes, but it's far easier to keep a single install up to date compared to twelve or more...

[1] http://mu.wordpress.org/

patio112• 17 years ago

I apologize to TechCrunch -- a member of a private forum I'm on, who I consider trustworthy, has reported that he discovered that his blog was hacked in exactly the manner specified.

restruct• 17 years ago

Ironically, TechCrunch itself appears to be running WordPress 2.7.1 instead of the latest 2.8.

onreact-com3• 17 years ago

Yeah. That's pathetic. You should erase any signs of the WP version you actually use as this is an open invitation for hackers.

Check out: http://designblurb.com/remove-wordpress-generator-meta-tag-h...

stse• 17 years ago

The only thing you're preventing is people reminding you that you have an old version. Worms, spiders and exploits doesn't check your version and someone checking will just see that you have removed it and try anyway.

enra• 17 years ago

They're running Wordpress Mu which sometimes "lags" behind the normal Wordpress. For long time after 2.8. came Mu was still 2.7.1, and just recently they have cached up to 2.8.4a.

_ck_2• 17 years ago

Install this simple plugin on any version of WordPress to block bad queries like that:

http://pastebin.com/f6697b79

It could easily be expanded to also look at $_POST data which is another form of attack you'll never see in your logs.

duskwuff• 17 years ago

The bad queries show up after your blog has already been hacked.

_ck_2• 17 years ago

Part of the attack is via XSS using $_GET queries that are very long. Apache defaults to accepting URLS up to 4K long which is insane and allows such attacks to happen. 255 characters is a far better lockdown with very few if any false positives.

onreact-com3• 17 years ago

This is just business as usual. Wordpress is under attack constantly. One of my blogs has been hacked 5 times this year already.

Of course updating is not enough.

That's why the Obama campaign used Movable Type instead of WP.

jonknee• 17 years ago

I thought they used Drupal?

Tichy• 17 years ago

Any word on how the debian package fares? It is stuck at version 2.5.1, but hopefully they provide extra patches?

ionfish2• 17 years ago

The WordPress core team don't, to the best of my knowledge. The Debian maintainers may.

ig1• 17 years ago

WordPress is probably the most heavily attacked web apps ever designed. If your serious about security then don't use Wordpress or always keep up with releases.

pbhjpbhj• 17 years ago

It gets more good attention too - it's better designed, easier to use, looks good has a vast range of plugins and templates available for free ...

tptacek3• 17 years ago

Wordpress has what is quite possibly the worst security design of any piece of web software.

JDigital• 17 years ago

Are hacked Wordpress installations usually running old versions, or is the latest Wordpress version usually equally vulnerable?

mcav• 17 years ago

I've swapped out my Wordpress installation in favor of a static HTML site generated by a couple of Python scripts. Wordpress is great if you need all that power, but it isn't maintenance-free. Making things static reminded me how nice it can be to have a site that is essentially immune to attack and blazing fast, all without the overhead of dynamic page generation. It's cool that Movable Type does static generation too.

Security Threat: WordPress Under Attack

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