This question really deserves some attention. WordFence looks like one of the most popular plugins for security nowadays. Compared with the iThemes security it is like 2.6:3.2 where iThemes Security (former Better WP Security) won. Of course these were thousand of 5 stars. The author of the WordFence wrote this section: My WordPress site is … Read more
Let’s go and see what would core do. In default-filters.php here is what content output passes through: add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘wptexturize’ ); add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘convert_smilies’ ); add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘convert_chars’ ); add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘wpautop’ ); add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘shortcode_unautop’ ); add_filter( ‘the_content’, ‘prepend_attachment’ ); None of these are dedicated security/escaping functions really. It is similar for comments, which … Read more
PHP files in the wp-includes directory should not be accessible from the outside, they should only be included by wordpress code. Therefor an easy fix to this is to use .htaccess rules to block access to *.php files that are under the wp-includes directory
esc_html and esc_attr are near-identical, the only difference is that output gets passed through differently named filters ( esc_html and attribute_escape respectively). esc_url is more complex and specific, it deals with characters that can’t be in URLs and allowed protocols (list of which can be passed as second argument). It will also prepend input with … Read more
WordPress backports security updates usually 1-3 versions back but they don’t promise anything. The WordPress LTS philosophy is that LTS = “Long Term Suckage“ The Long Term Suckage theory is: While I like the theory of LTS, what happens in practice is it covers up the incompetence of IT or developers because they put off … Read more
If you have FTP access to your server, the most secure setup is not having your themes or plugins directory writable by your webserver and instead having WordPress update files using FTP. When you go to update a plugin, WordPress will prompt you for your FTP details. The FTP method is a lot slower than … Read more
You cannot export passwords as plaintext in WordPress, because they are not stored in plaintext. What you see here is obviously the result of a very bad plugin. Fields like Payment, Sex or Company are not even part of the regular WordPress tables. For the future: Do not install plugins without prior tests and reviews … Read more
I posted the question on the wordpress slack and the answer I got https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/core/p1447905339001506 is that the difference is semantic and not practical and there is no reason to prefer the usage of one over the others (except for semantics of course)
If I were a hacker with access to the database, wouldn’t I just add my code to a post’s content? If you’ve got access to the database, chances are that you’ve got enough access that escaping isn’t going to stop you. Escaping is not going to help you if you’ve been hacked. It’s not supposed … Read more
It would appear that out of the box, there isn’t a difference function esc_html( $text ) { $safe_text = wp_check_invalid_utf8( $text ); $safe_text = _wp_specialchars( $safe_text, ENT_QUOTES ); /** * Filters a string cleaned and escaped for output in HTML. * * Text passed to esc_html() is stripped of invalid or special characters * before … Read more