Block Greasy Uploads Scanner

Whether you’re running WordPress or not, your site may be getting hit by endless scanning for your site’s uploaded files and similar nonexistent resources. Specifically, the “Greasy Uploads Scanner” endlessly scans sites for nonexistent resources in the /uploads/ directory, even if the directory itself doesn’t exist. Just mindless scanning for all sorts of weird files. It steals your server resources and threatens your site security. We hates them. And we wants to block them. Continue reading »

How to Block Bad Bots

Suffering from spammers, content scrapers, bandwidth leeches, and other bad bots? Got some loser stalking your chat forum? Site getting scanned by endless malicious requests? In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to block bad bots and users with minimal effort. Keeping the trash away from your site is gonna free up valuable server resources, conserve bandwidth, and improve the overall security and quality of your site. Continue reading »

Block Proxy Visits with PHP

I wrote recently about how to block proxy visits with WordPress. That article provides a simple, plug-&-play script that you can drop into WordPress-powered site. This article goes further with two effective techniques for blocking proxy visits to your site using only a few lines of PHP. These techniques work for any PHP-enabled site, including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and many others. And they’re both easy to implement. Just a few minutes and your site can be relatively free of most […] Continue reading »

Worst IPs: 2016 Edition

A little late this year, but following tradition here is my list of the absolute worst IP addresses from 2016. All in nice numerical order for easy crunching. These IPs are associated with all sorts of malicious activity, including exploit scanning, email harvesting, brute-force login attacks, referrer spam, and everything in between. Really obnoxious stuff that degrades your site’s performance and potentially threatens security. Continue reading »

.htaccess Cleanup

Once again I am cleaning up my sites’ .htaccess files. I do this from time to time to remove old redirects, refresh blacklists, and update security and SEO-related directives. It’s tedious work, but the performance and security benefits make it all worthwhile. This post shares some of the techniques that were added, removed, or replaced from .htaccess, and explains the reasoning behind each decision. I do this for the sake of reference, and hopefully it will give you some ideas […] Continue reading »

WordPress Block Proxy Visits

I’ve covered a lot of techniques for controlling proxy access. And I’m not done yet. This post expands on the block tough proxies technique by making it plug-&-play with WordPress. Continue reading »

Lynda.com Course: Developing Secure WordPress Sites

[ WordPress: Developing Secure WordPress Sites ]

After months of preparation and production, my new video course on developing secure WordPress sites is now available at Lynda.com. This is my second video course on securing WordPress; the first one was originally launched in 2011 and remained in Lynda’s library for over five years. I received a lot of great feedback on the course, and so I jumped on the opportunity to do another one. If there is one thing that I enjoy doing, it’s helping people with […] Continue reading »

Block nuisance requests for .well-known, apple-app, etc.

Anyone who is paying attention to their server access and error logs has probably noticed that Google and other bots have been making endless requests for .well-known, apple-app-site-association, and various related files. This quick post explains how to save some server bandwidth and resources by blocking such repetitive requests, and also looks at a related problem with certain search engines <cough> not respecting a standard “410 Gone” server response. Continue reading »

Stop User Enumeration in WordPress

This tutorial explains how to block user-enumeration scans in WordPress. As explained in greater depth here, user enumeration happens when some malicious script scans a WordPress site for user data by requesting numerical user IDs. For example, requests for author=1 through some number, say, author=1000, may reveal the usernames for all associated users. With a simple enumeration script, an attacker can scan your site and obtain a list of login names in a matter of seconds. Continue reading »

They’re Scanning for Your Backup Files

Just a reminder to keep your backup files offline. Do not store them in any publicly accessible space. It’s just not worth the risk man. And if you’re working online, you should know this already. If not, then continue reading to learn why it’s absolutely mission critical. Continue reading »

Brute-Force Login Drip Attack

I’ve been noticing a new strategy for brute-force login attacks: the slow, incremental “drip” attack. Instead of slamming a login page with hundreds or thousands of brute-force login attempts all within a few minutes, some attackers have been taking a more low-key approach by slowing down the rate of login attempts in order to bypass security measures. The “drip” brute-force attack is extremely annoying, and possibly dangerous if any of your registered users are using weak login credentials. This article […] Continue reading »

Stop RSSing.com from Framing Your Content

[ RSSing.com Removal Request or Whatever ]

This quick post explains how to stop the notorious site scrapers, RSSing.com, from stealing your content. In fact, this technique can be used to stop virtually any site that uses HTML frames to scrape your pages. Once again, the solution is one line of .htaccess to the rescue. Continue reading »

Use Strong Usernames for Better Security

Image courtesy of eChunks.com Here is a quick security tip for people using popular apps on the Web. That is, apps like WordPress that may be widely used and targeted by bad actors and/or automated scripts. It’s all about adding another layer of security by hardening admin-level usernames.. Every now and then, I get an email letting me know that someone has requested a password reset for one of my admin-level WordPress accounts. Usually, the email notifications are sent directly […] Continue reading »

How to Block Baidu Bot

A user of my 6G Firewall recently asked how to block the “baidu” bot from accessing their site. This post explains why Baidu is not blocked in 6G and provides a quick .htaccess technique to deny it (or anything claiming to be it) access to your site. Continue reading »

Block D-Bag Database Exploits

Some douchebag has been scanning my sites for a variety of potential database exploits. My sites are secure, so there is no real security threat, but the scans are extremely annoying and waste my server resources. Resources like bandwidth and memory that I would rather use for legitimate visitors. So after collecting some data and experimenting a bit, I wrote a simple .htaccess snippet to block a vast majority of these pathetic database-exploit scans. Continue reading »

6G Firewall

After three years of development, testing, and feedback, I’m pleased to announce the official launch version of the 6G Firewall (aka the 6G Blacklist). This version of the nG Firewall is greatly refined, heavily tested, and better than ever. Fine-tuned to minimize false positives, the 6G Firewall protects your site against a wide variety of malicious URI requests, bad bots, spam referrers, and other attacks. Blocking bad traffic improves site security, reduces server load, and conserves precious resources. The 6G […] Continue reading »

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