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

Users, permissions, and dangers


Files, directories, users, groups, other users, ownership, permissions. Streuth!

This is fundamental Tux, or Linux, stuff and, regardless of your self-hosting type, you have to live and breathe it because, if you're not clued up about your server's permissions structure, and in turn the security of your web files, you're begging for trouble. Here's the deal.

Files and users

Linux is a bunch of files. Everything is a file. Even directories are files, listing other files.

Actually, two things are not files, users and groups. We'll consider those now.

When a user is created, a namesake group is also created by default. So you may have the username superbob and be a member of the group superbob.

When user superbob creates a file, rights are automatically dished out:

  • user—superbob owns and can have various user permissions over the file

  • group—superbob's namesake group owns and may have different rights and that is convenient because selected users can be added to that...