Book Image

WordPress 3 Ultimate Security

Book Image

WordPress 3 Ultimate Security

Overview of this book

Most likely – today – some hacker tried to crack your WordPress site, its data and content – maybe once but, with automated tools, very likely dozens or hundreds of times. There's no silver bullet but if you want to cut the odds of a successful attack from practically inevitable to practically zero, read this book. WordPress 3 Ultimate Security shows you how to hack your site before someone else does. You'll uncover its weaknesses before sealing them off, securing your content and your day-to-day local-to-remote editorial process. This is more than some "10 Tips ..." guide. It's ultimate protection – because that's what you need. Survey your network, using the insight from this book to scan for and seal the holes before galvanizing the network with a rack of cool tools. Solid! The WordPress platform is only as safe as the weakest network link, administrator discipline, and your security knowledge. We'll cover the bases, underpinning your working process from any location, containing content, locking down the platform, your web files, the database, and the server. With that done, your ongoing security is infinitely more manageable. Covering deep-set security yet enjoyable to read, WordPress 3 Ultimate Security will multiply your understanding and fortify your site.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
WordPress 3 Ultimate Security
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Pruning hidden users


On the Dashboard's Users page, scan your privileged users for suspect additions. Maybe there's a new Administrator, else an additional Editor, and so on. Delete those, but be aware that, sometimes, this check isn't thorough enough.

The foolproof method is to pop open your database, say again with phpMyAdmin and, substituting the three mentions of the wp_ prefix for any bespoke prefix you may have, run this query from the SQL panel:

SELECT u.ID, u.user_login
FROM wp_usermeta m, wp_users u
WHERE m.meta_key = 'wp_user_level'
AND m.meta_value = 10
AND m.user_id = u.ID

By clicking on Go, your Administrators are listed if, as is the case here, that role is specified with the value of 10 in AND m.meta_value = 10. Repeat the process for Editors with a value of 7 or, for Authors, using 2. For the record, Contributors have a value of 1 and Subscribers, doubtless without prejudice, get a big fat 0:

Here, we've got two Administrators with ur-d00med-m8 looking decidedly shady. We can see that the user has an ID of 9 so, again by clicking through the SQL tab in the menu, we run the query we see in the screenshot:

Bear in mind that, if a hacker got this far, there could easily be a backdoor somewhere in your files and, while the Exploit Scanner may have thrown that or those up, it would be prudent to wipe and replace the web files. Talking of which, here's the big stuff ...