Cookies for Comments vs Secure HTTP Headers

This plugin adds a stylesheet or image to your blog’s html source code. When a browser loads that stylesheet or image a cookie is dropped. If that user then leaves a comment the cookie is checked. If it doesn’t exist the comment is marked as spam. The plugin can also check how long it took a user to enter a comment. If it’s too fast it’s probably a spam bot. How fast can a legitimate user enter their name, email, web address and enter a well thought out comment? For the adventurous, add these lines to your .htaccess and it will block spam attempts before they ever get to WordPress. Replace the Xs with the cookie that was set in your browser after viewing your blog. You can also find the cookie value by examining the page source code and looking for “css.php?k=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX”. Make sure the lines go above the standard WordPress rules. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.*$ RewriteRule ^wp-comments-post.php - [F,L] If you use WordPress MU, replace wp-comments-post.php above with wp-signup.php to block spam signups. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.*$ RewriteRule ^wp-signup.php - [F,L]

Harden your web applications. HTTP header fields are components of the header section of request and response messages. The headers define the operating parameters of an HTTP transaction. Securing HTTP headers will improve the resilience of your web application against many common attacks including those that are on the OWASP top 10 list. Securing headers can also improve your SEO rank and in addition to preventing websites from being marked as dangerous by browsers and antivirus applications. Protect sensitive user information and be compliant with privacy regulations. Defend users from stealing private data by protecting website cookies. Use the proper directive such as “secure”, “httponly” and “samesite”, all of those will be applied automatically by “Secure HTTP Headers” plugin. Secure HTTP Headers will automatically analyze any website and will build up secure headers directives, by the latest best practice. In addition, Secure HTTP Headers offers fully configurable options, apply or skip any header directive as needed. Install and activate Secure HTTP Headers with full confidence, the deactivation of this plugin will return your website header directives to their original state. Main plugin functionality HTTP Strict Transport Security – helps to protect websites against man-in-the-middle attacks and cookie hijacking X-Frame-Options – helps to protect users against ClickJacking attacks X-Content-Type-Options – helps to prevent the browser from MIME-sniffing Referrer-Policy – helps to control how much referrer information should be included with requests Clear-Site-Data – helps to ensure that data is deleted from the browser if the user logs out X-Download-Options – helps to control how IE 8 will handle downloaded HTML files Access-Control-Allow-Origin – helps to ensure whether the response can be shared with requesting code from the given origin Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy – helps to prevent a document from loading any cross-origin resources that don’t explicitly grant the document permission Permissions-Policy – helps to allow and deny the use of browser features in its own frame, and in content within any iframe elements in the document Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy – helps to protect websites against a set of cross-origin attacks dubbed XS-Leaks Cross-Origin-Resource-Policy – helps to protect websites against speculative side-channel attacks, like Spectre, as well as Cross-Site Script Inclusion attacks X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies – helps to control how cross-domain requests from Flash and PDF documents are handled Cookie Http-Only flag – helps to protect websites against Cross-Site Scripting, or XSS attacks Cookie Secure flag – helps to ensure that cookie is sent over a secure connection Cookie Samesite Lax flag – helps to protect websites against CSRF and XSSI attacks Expect-CT – helps to prevent the use of misissued certificates for a website. Note: The Expect-CT will likely become obsolete in June 2021 What are the optional extras? Magnisec is offering “Secure HTTP Headers enhanced” A plugin that contains, in addition, an engine that watches and builds in any website changes a CSP – Content Security Policy that is best practice and recommended by all professional securities experts, that mitigate XSS -Cross site Scripting, one of the most common and destructive attacks. Price: 50$ /year for a domain. More details and installation here