WordPress Automatic Background Updates

WordPress updates can be very important, both from a security and performance perspective. Although doing these WordPress, or any, updates can be done manually at any time, why not set them to automatically install? To my knowledge, there is no check box anywhere in the dashboard to achieve this. There are plug ins that can be used, but I believe ‘less is more’ when it comes to plug ins – they can fill up the plug ins directory and even increase the odds of a security breach. So, the best method is to directly edit the wp-config.php file. Minor updates are enabled by default, but there are a couple of other higher level updates needing to be enabled.

The PHP file sits at your hosting WordPress folder location.

Full instructions are contained in this WordPress article.

Backdoor in Captcha Discovered

Nothing to see here, folks …

“Backdoor in Captcha Plugin Affects 300K WordPress Sites”

“The WordPress repository recently removed the plugin Captcha over what initially appeared to be a trademark issue with the current author using “WordPress” [Editors note: the original page has been removed, we’re now linking to a screen shot.] in their brand name.

Whenever the WordPress repository removes a plugin with a large user base, we check to see if it was possibly due to something security-related. Wordfence alerts users when any plugin they are running is removed from WordPress repo as well. At the time of its removal, Captcha had over 300,000 active installs, so its removal significantly impacts many users.”

Incredible analysis in the below link. Nicely done by WordFence.

Full article or Blog here

Ukraine In The House

There are hundreds and hundreds of these WordFence Firewall entries on Riguy.Com. I blocked some IPs here and there; that will work for a while. I wonder what these nice people from Ukraine would ever want with my most humble of web sites? Regardless, thanks WordFence [awesome security plugin]!

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Activate Plugins after Update

Memo to self: be sure to double check updated WordPress plugins immediately after doing the update!

It is like stating the obvious, but nonetheless very important to remember the above. I just updated the Captcha and WordFence plugins. I saw an error, but remembered to check the Plugins section to verify they are running. Once activated the plugins are fine. Some seem to need this, while others activate ‘automagically’.

WordPress Security – WordFence

WordFence Security hard at work, on my humble website ;>

I love this Plugin [although I use the free version for my personal website, our work pays for it because it is worth every penny].

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