wp-cli/secure-command
Official website: Hackthewp.com
Manages common security aspects of WordPress. Supports nginx and Apache.
Basic Usage
This package implements the following commands:
Deploy All Security rules
Deploys all above-mentioned rules at once.
wp secure all
Remove All Security Rules
Removes all security rules.
wp secure flush
Add Security Headers
Adds the HSTS, Referrer-Policy, X-Content-Type-Options and X-Frame-Options
You can choose to add all above or only one or more by using --headers
argument.
Example:
wp secure add-security-headers
wp secure add-security-headers --headers=Strict-Transport-Security
wp secure add-security-headers --headers=Strict-Transport-Security,X-Frame-Options
Block the access to sensitive files and directories
wp secure block-access <what-to-block>
By default, this command blocks the direct access to sensitive files and directories: readme.txt
, readme.html
, xmlrpc.php
, wp-config.php
, wp-admin/install.php
, wp-admin/upgrade.php
, .git
, svn
, cache
and vendors
Possible options are:
- sensitive-files
- sensitive-directories
- xmlrpc
- htaccess
- custom
- all (does all the above)
Examples:
wp secure block-access sensitive-files
wp secure block-access sensitive-directories
wp secure block-access xmlrpc
wp secure block-access htaccess
wp secure block-access all
However, you can also block custom files and/or folders of your choice. To do that you should use custom
argument and pass one of two additional options --files
and/or --directories
.
If you want to block custom files, make sure that you pass only file names, not a full file paths.
Examples:
wp secure block-access custom --files=dump.sql,phpinfo.php,adminer.php
wp secure block-access custom --directories=wp-content/mu-plugins
Block Author Scanning
wp secure block-author-scanning
Blocks author scanning. Author scanning is a common technique of brute force attacks on WordPress. It is used to crack passwords for the known usernames and to gather additional information about the WordPress itself.
Examples:
wp secure block-author-scanning
Block Direct Access and Execution in certain directories
wp secure block-php-execution <where>
Blocks direct access and execution of PHP files in wp-content/plugins
, wp-content/uploads
, wp-content/themes
and wp-includes
directories.
You need to specify where you want to prevent direct access to PHP files. Possible options are:
- all
- plugins
- uploads
- themes
- wp-includes
Examples:
wp secure block-php-execution all
wp secure block-php-execution plugins
wp secure block-php-execution uploads
wp secure block-php-execution themes
wp secure block-php-execution wp-includes
Disable Directory Browsing
wp secure disable-directory-browsing
Disables directory browsing.
By default, when your web server does not find an index file (i.e. a file like index.php or index.html), it automatically displays an index page showing the contents of the directory. This could make your site vulnerable to hack attacks by revealing important information needed to exploit a vulnerability in a WordPress plugin, theme, or your server in general.
Examples:
wp secure disable-directory-browsing
Disable WordPress File Editor
Disables the WordPress file editor. It could be used to edit arbitrary files using the web interface. This makes it easier for attackers to change files on the server using a web browser.
wp secure disable-file-editor
Fix file and directory permissions
wp secure fix-permissions
Use this command to verify that the permissions of all files and directories are set according the WordPress recommendations. This command will set 0644 to all files and 0755 to all folders inside WordPress installation.
IMPORTANT: Don't use this command if you don't know what you are doing here!
Check the integrity of WordPress files
Downloads MD5 checksums for the current version from WordPress.org, and compares those checksums against the currently installed files.
It also returns a list of files that shouldn't be part of default WordPress installation, which can be very useful when you are looking for a possible injected files.
Examples:
wp secure integrity-scan
Global options
Remove single security rule
Using --remove
with any rule command, you can remove it from configuration.
wp secure block-access xmlrpc --remove
Get the output instead of writing in configuration files
Using --output
option with any rule command, you can see actual rule code which you can inspect or manually copy to any file of your choice.
wp secure block-access htaccess --output
wp secure block-access htaccess --output --server=nginx
Specify server type
By default, all rules are generated for Apache or LiteSpeed web servers that utilize .htaccess
file. However, you can use --server
to specify nginx if you want.
wp secure block-access htaccess --server=nginx
Specify custom file path
By default, all commands assume that rules should be written in the root of WordPress installation in .htaccess
and nginx.conf
, depending on which server you choose. However, you can specify a custom file path that is going to be used for storing security rules.
wp secure block-access htaccess --file-path=/home/user/mysite.com/.htaccess
Important Note for nginx users
The nginx rules are stored in the nginx.conf
file. However, for rules to actually work, you need to manually include this file in your vhost configuration and then restart nginx server:
systemctl restart nginx
WIth each rule deploy or removal, you also need to restart nginx server.
Installing
To install the latest version of this package over what's included in WP-CLI, run:
wp package install [email protected]:igorhrcek/wp-cli-secure-command.git
Development and testing
You need to set up two working WordPress installations on Apache and nginx. Usage of Docker containers is highly recommended - you can use the official WordPress Docker containers, BitNami or bootstrap your environment using ddev.
For testing you need to create .env
file with the following content:
WORDPRESS_NGINX_PATH=wp/nginx
WORDPRESS_NGINX_URL=https://wpnginx.ddev.site
WORDPRESS_APACHE_PATH=wp/apache
WORDPRESS_APACHE_URL=https://wpapache.ddev.site
These paths and URLs are going to be used during tests, so make sure that they are accessible.
Contributing
We appreciate you taking the initiative to contribute to this project.
Contributing isn’t limited to just code. We encourage you to contribute in the way that best fits your abilities, by writing tutorials, giving a demo at your local meetup, helping other users with their support questions, or revising our documentation.