Updates on CyberSecurity, WordPress and what we're cooking in the lab today.

Considering the amount of malicious activity that takes place on the internet, it's no surprise that successful attacks on WordPress sites are launched across a wide variety of vectors. Whether outdated plugin code is to blame, or password reuse, or any number of other security flaws, no site owner sets out to introduce a vulnerability into their environment. Ultimately any security issue begins with a mistake, and while mistakes are forgivable there's still risk involved if they're not discovered and remedied....read more

Last week's article covering the decision to distrust Symantec-issued TLS certificates generated a great response from our readers. One common question we received, and one that pops up just about any time SSL/TLS comes up, is how to determine when a site does and does not need such a certificate. Spoiler: Your site should probably have a TLS certificate....read more

This is a final reminder that legacy TLS certificates issued by Symantec, including those issued by authorities like Thawte, Geotrust, and RapidSSL which used Symantec as a central authority, will be distrusted by both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox beginning in October. Apple products have partially distrusted these certificates and plan to also distrust the full set of certificates at some point in Fall 2018. Digicert has acquired the Certificate Authority (CA) and its infrastructure, and is issuing free replacement certificates for all affected customers. If you have already replaced your certificate, no action is needed....read more

In an advisory published yesterday, Mozilla disclosed the presence of nine security flaws in Firefox 61 which have been patched in the latest release of the browser. Some of the bugs are severe, but at this time do not appear to be receiving attacks in the wild. To protect yourself as a Firefox user, ensure that you have updated Firefox to the latest version as soon as possible. To do this, click the 'Firefox' menu and 'About Firefox'. The browser will check for an update automatically and will download the update if available. You will then be prompted to 'Restart to update Firefox'...read more

In the context of cybersecurity, the adage "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is a massive understatement. Make no mistake, the easiest way to handle a security incident is to prevent it from ever happening in the first place. We continually remind our readers about security best practices because the time spent implementing them is nominal compared to the time that would be spent responding in the aftermath of a successful attack....read more

Last spring, after discussing the tools and tech used by our team, we published a list of 51 Tools for Security Analysts. The article was well-received, and the comments offered some great suggestions to top it all off....read more

I recently got a call from a friend I haven't seen for a while asking me if I'd like to grab a coffee. He had a few questions about whether WordPress is secure. I'm always looking for an excuse to visit the hip Georgetown neighborhood just south of Seattle, so I jumped at the chance. Plus Chris is an all-round awesome guy who works for a well-known social media startup, so I wanted an update!...read more

Yesterday the Drupal security team announced a highly critical unauthenticated remote code execution vulnerability in Drupal core. The vulnerability allows an attacker to leverage multiple attack vectors and take complete control of a website. The Drupal team estimates that, at the time of the announcement, over one million sites are affected - about 9% of Drupal sites. They also reported that, to their knowledge, it was not being actively exploited....read more

This is a public service announcement and a reminder to site owners. Google's Chrome browser has already started the process of ending support for Symantec SSL/TLS certificates. This includes companies owned by Symantec including Thawte, Verisign, Equifax, GeoTrust and RapidSSL....read more

At Wordfence, one of our goals is to empower you as much as possible to be self-sufficient, at no additional cost. To do that, we provide Wordfence as a free security plugin. Over the years we have also developed a comprehensive WordPress Security Learning Center that provides readers with a complete understanding of WordPress Security and how to run a secure website. We have also published a number of articles explaining how to recover from a hack, should that worst-case scenario ever arise....read more