Securing your joomla website
Published by Evil Bee Saturday, 26 July 2008 17:21
In addition to understanding the threats, and implementing general defensive strategies, it is important to know more specific details about security in Joomla, as well some specific examples of how to implement security strategies.
The developers of Joomla are constantly striving to improve the overall security of the system by employing good programming techniques and addressing security issues as they arise. It is therefore important to try to keep up with the latest version of Joomla - 'patches' (collections of replacement files) are released periodically to address bugs and security holes as they are discovered (click here to subscribe to the official Joomla announcements forum, and here for the security announcements forum).
Hackers attack Joomla / Mambo sites!
Published by Evil Bee Friday, 22 February 2008 15:22
A storm of exploits has come over Joomla and Mambobased websites. Hackers try to replace the page content and also install backdoor or IRC scripts. The security problem of the sites is (normally) not Joomla! Of course, you should run your site with the latest Joomla / Mambo versions.Nearly all hacks are done through holes in 3rd party components. At the moment, every hour there is a new component found with security problems.
You have to do something:
Harvard site hacked and leaked on BitTorrent
Published by Evil Bee Monday, 18 February 2008 18:57
The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences website appears to have been the subject of a major security breach, as server backups, site databases and contact databases are leaked to BitTorrent. The 125MB file is currently being tracked by The Pirate Bay.
Early reports indicate that a Harvard University website has become the victim of a major security breach. A torrent currently tracked by The Pirate Bay which links to a 125mb .zip file, claims to be the backup from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences website.
A note attached to the torrent says that the file contains a backup of the site -- including some contacts files and other files associated with Joomla, an open-source content management system -- along with other various bits. It appears to be legitimate.
The backup -seeded from a Harvard IP address (and others)- carries many files, passwords and what appears to be a full directory structure for the site. Three other major database files are mentioned specifically, details as follows:
Phil-Taylor security holes list
Published by Evil Bee Sunday, 22 July 2007 15:26
We received an email this morning from Phil-Taylor.com listing security holes in various Joomla components.
I have an awful lot of respect for Phil and his work developing Mambo and now his components. However, I think the tone of the latest email could have been improved. People are understandably jumpy when it comes to security and I think he could have done a better job of pointing people towards freely available solutions rather than to his new security site.
There have always been third-party components with vulnerabilities and I've not seen any evidence that security exploits are increasing. What may be increasing is the number of hacker attacks. Some major Joomla sites are being attacked every 60-90 seconds. However, thats not much different from a computer plugged in to the internet.
Is Joomla a Secure Platform for a Business?
Published by Evil Bee Sunday, 22 July 2007 14:44
Joomla and other content management systems often get a swift kick in their binary crotch when a site gets hacked. Here's a comment from a professional host admin, the guy who is responsible for server security...
"The installed Joomla is trivially crackable"
Here's the problem: Joomla, WHEN properly installed with the most current version is very secure. The key there: "properly installed" which implies more than just making sure the most current security patches/ upgrades have been applied.
What is common in almost all Joomla sites of any size: Multiple components are installed to boost functionality. Editors, image galleries, forums, shopping carts... all these need to be just as secure as Joomla, as one hole is all that's needed.
When we first started getting reports of hacks a year ago, it was mostly overwriting the configuration.php file which resulted in simple defacement. As long as you had a good copy of that file, the fix was in place in a few minutes.
Google knows your joomla passwords!
Published by Evil Bee Monday, 09 October 2006 10:30
Well maybe, Now I have got your attention, read the following information published by the Joomla Core team.
Joomla! Developer Network
It has come to our attention that Google has released a new product, Google Code Search, that is capable of indexing and crawling through archive files stored in the public directories of web servers. We are reporting this as a security advisory because we have discovered that some site administrators are storing archives / backups of their website in the web root. Because of this, Google Code Search is able to crawl the archives and read unparsed PHP files as if they were plain text. This has resulted in the disclosure of some sensitive information including MySQL passwords and SMTP credentials.