NinjaFirewall (WP Edition) – Advanced Security Plugin and Firewall vs WPVulnerability

A true Web Application Firewall NinjaFirewall (WP Edition) is a true Web Application Firewall. Although it can be installed and configured just like a plugin, it is a stand-alone firewall that stands in front of WordPress. It allows any blog administrator to benefit from very advanced and powerful security features that usually aren’t available at the WordPress level, but only in security applications such as the Apache ModSecurity module or the PHP Suhosin extension. NinjaFirewall requires at least PHP 7.1, MySQLi extension and is only compatible with Unix-like OS (Linux, BSD). It is not compatible with Microsoft Windows. NinjaFirewall can hook, scan, sanitise or reject any HTTP/HTTPS request sent to a PHP script before it reaches WordPress or any of its plugins. All scripts located inside the blog installation directories and sub-directories will be protected, including those that aren’t part of the WordPress package. Even encoded PHP scripts, hackers shell scripts and backdoors will be filtered by NinjaFirewall. Powerful filtering engine NinjaFirewall includes the most powerful filtering engine available in a WordPress plugin. Its most important feature is its ability to normalize and transform data from incoming HTTP requests which allows it to detect Web Application Firewall evasion techniques and obfuscation tactics used by hackers, as well as to support and decode a large set of encodings. See our blog for a full description: An introduction to NinjaFirewall filtering engine. Fastest and most efficient brute-force attack protection for WordPress By processing incoming HTTP requests before your blog and any of its plugins, NinjaFirewall is the only plugin for WordPress able to protect it against very large brute-force attacks, including distributed attacks coming from several thousands of different IPs. See our benchmarks and stress-tests: Brute-force attack detection plugins comparison The protection applies to the wp-login.php script but can be extended to the xmlrpc.php one. The incident can also be written to the server AUTH log, which can be useful to the system administrator for monitoring purposes or banning IPs at the server level (e.g., Fail2ban). Real-time detection File Guard real-time detection is a totally unique feature provided by NinjaFirewall: it can detect, in real-time, any access to a PHP file that was recently modified or created, and alert you about this. If a hacker uploaded a shell script to your site (or injected a backdoor into an already existing file) and tried to directly access that file using his browser or a script, NinjaFirewall would hook the HTTP request and immediately detect that the file was recently modified or created. It would send you an alert with all details (script name, IP, request, date and time). File integrity monitoring File Check lets you perform file integrity monitoring by scanning your website hourly, twicedaily or daily. Any modification made to a file will be detected: file content, file permissions, file ownership, timestamp as well as file creation and deletion. Watch your website traffic in real time Live Log lets you watch your website traffic in real time. It displays connections in a format similar to the one used by the tail -f Unix command. Because it communicates directly with the firewall, i.e., without loading WordPress, Live Log is fast, lightweight and it will not affect your server load, even if you set its refresh rate to the lowest value. Event Notifications NinjaFirewall can alert you by email on specific events triggered within your blog. Some of those alerts are enabled by default and it is highly recommended to keep them enabled. It is not unusual for a hacker, after breaking into your WordPress admin console, to install or just to upload a backdoored plugin or theme in order to take full control of your website. NinjaFirewall can also attach a PHP backtrace to important notifications. Monitored events: Administrator login. Modification of any administrator account in the database. Plugins upload, installation, (de)activation, update, deletion. Themes upload, installation, activation, deletion. WordPress update. Pending security update in your plugins and themes. Stay protected against the latest WordPress security vulnerabilities To get the most efficient protection, NinjaFirewall can automatically update its security rules daily, twice daily or even hourly. Each time a new vulnerability is found in WordPress or one of its plugins/themes, a new set of security rules will be made available to protect your blog immediately. Strong Privacy Unlike a Cloud Web Application Firewall, or Cloud WAF, NinjaFirewall works and filters the traffic on your own server and infrastructure. That means that your sensitive data (contact form messages, customers credit card number, login credentials etc) remains on your server and is not routed through a third-party company’s servers, which could pose unnecessary risks (e.g., decryption of your HTTPS traffic in order to inspect it, employees accessing your data or logs in plain text, theft of private information, man-in-the-middle attack etc). Your website can run NinjaFirewall and be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). See our blog for more details. IPv6 compatibility IPv6 compatibility is a mandatory feature for a security plugin: if it supports only IPv4, hackers can easily bypass the plugin by using an IPv6. NinjaFirewall natively supports IPv4 and IPv6 protocols, for both public and private addresses. Multi-site support NinjaFirewall is multi-site compatible. It will protect all sites from your network and its configuration interface will be accessible only to the Super Admin from the network main site. Possibility to prepend your own PHP code to the firewall You can prepend your own PHP code to the firewall with the help of an optional distributed configuration file. It will be processed before WordPress and all its plugins are loaded. This is a very powerful feature, and there is almost no limit to what you can do: add your own security rules, manipulate HTTP requests, variables etc. Low Footprint Firewall NinjaFirewall is very fast, optimised, compact, and requires very low system resource. See for yourself: download and install the Code Profiler plugin and compare NinjaFirewall’s performance with other security plugins. Non-Intrusive User Interface NinjaFirewall looks and feels like a built-in WordPress feature. It does not contain intrusive banners, warnings or flashy colors. It uses the WordPress simple and clean interface and is also smartphone-friendly. Contextual Help Each NinjaFirewall menu page has a contextual help screen with useful information about how to use and configure it. If you need help, click on the Help menu tab located in the upper right corner of each page in your admin panel. Need more security ? Check out our new supercharged edition: NinjaFirewall WP+ Edition Unix shared memory use for inter-process communication and blazing fast performances. IP-based Access Control. Role-based Access Control. Country-based Access Control via geolocation. URL-based Access Control. Bot-based Access Control. Import/Export the configuration from WP-CLI. Centralized Logging. Antispam for comment and user regisration forms. Rate limiting option to block aggressive bots, crawlers, web scrapers and HTTP attacks. Response body filter to scan the output of the HTML page right before it is sent to your visitors browser. Better File uploads management. Better logs management. Syslog logging. Learn more about the WP+ Edition unique features. Compare the WP and WP+ Editions. Requirements WordPress 4.9+ Admin/Superadmin with manage_options + unfiltered_html capabilities. PHP 7.1+ MySQL or MariaDB with MySQLi extension Apache / Nginx / LiteSpeed / Openlitespeed compatible Unix-like operating systems only (Linux, BSD etc). NinjaFirewall is NOT compatible with Microsoft Windows.

This plugin integrates with the WPVulnerability API to provide real-time vulnerability assessments for your WordPress core, plugins, themes, PHP version, Apache HTTPD, nginx, MariaDB, MySQL, ImageMagick, curl, memcached, Redis, and SQLite. It delivers detailed reports directly within your WordPress dashboard, helping you stay aware of potential security risks. Configure the plugin to send periodic notifications about your site’s security status, ensuring you remain informed without being overwhelmed. Designed for ease of use, it supports proactive security measures without storing or retrieving any personal data from your site. Data reliability The information provided by the information database comes from different sources that have been reviewed by third parties. There is no liability of any kind for the information. Act at your own risk. Using the plugin WP-CLI You can use the following WP-CLI commands to manage and check vulnerabilities: Core: wp wpvulnerability core Plugins: wp wpvulnerability plugins Themes: wp wpvulnerability themes PHP: wp wpvulnerability php Apache HTTPD: wp wpvulnerability apache nginx: wp wpvulnerability nginx MariaDB: wp wpvulnerability mariadb MySQL: wp wpvulnerability mysql ImageMagick: wp wpvulnerability imagemagick curl: wp wpvulnerability curl memcached: wp wpvulnerability memcached Redis: wp wpvulnerability redis SQLite: wp wpvulnerability sqlite To configure the plugin you can use: Hide component: wp wpvulnerability config hide [on|off] Notification email: wp wpvulnerability config email (comma separatted) Notification period: wp wpvulnerability config period Log retention: wp wpvulnerability config log-retention (in days) Cache duration: wp wpvulnerability config cache (in hours) All commands support the --format option to specify the output format: --format=table: Displays the results in a table format (default). --format=json: Displays the results in JSON format. Need help? wp wpvulnerability --help: Displays help information for WPVulnerability commands. wp wpvulnerability [command] --help: Displays help information for a WPVulnerability command. REST API The WPVulnerability plugin provides several REST API endpoints to fetch vulnerability information for different components of your WordPress site. Core: /wpvulnerability/v1/core Plugins: /wpvulnerability/v1/plugins Themes: /wpvulnerability/v1/themes PHP: /wpvulnerability/v1/php Apache HTTPD: /wpvulnerability/v1/apache nginx: /wpvulnerability/v1/nginx MariaDB: /wpvulnerability/v1/mariadb MySQL: /wpvulnerability/v1/mysql ImageMagick: /wpvulnerability/v1/imagemagick curl: /wpvulnerability/v1/curl memcached: /wpvulnerability/v1/memcached Redis: /wpvulnerability/v1/redis SQLite: /wpvulnerability/v1/sqlite The WPVulnerability REST API uses Application Passwords for authentication. You need to include a valid Application Password in the Authorization header of your requests. Example Request with Authentication curl -X GET https://example.com/wp-json/wpvulnerability/v1/plugins -u username:application_password Replace username with your WordPress username and application_password with your Application Password. Extra Configurations “From:” mail (since: 3.2.2) If, for some reason, you need the emails sent by the plugin to have a From different from the site administrator, you can change it from the wp-config.php by adding a constant: define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_MAIL', 'sender@example.com' ); If the constant is active, it will be visible in the configuration screen. Force hiding checks (since: 4.1.0) If you want to always hide a specific component, you can define a constant in wp-config.php. When set to true, the option will be checked automatically in the settings screen and the related analysis will be skipped. Example: define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_APACHE', true ); Available constants: WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_CORE, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_PLUGINS, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_THEMES, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_PHP, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_APACHE, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_NGINX, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_MARIADB, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_MYSQL, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_IMAGEMAGICK, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_CURL, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_MEMCACHED, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_REDIS, WPVULNERABILITY_HIDE_SQLITE. Cache duration (since: 4.1.0) By default, data from the API is cached for 12 hours. To change this, define WPVULNERABILITY_CACHE_HOURS in wp-config.php with one of 1, 6, 12 or 24. This value overrides the setting screen and WP-CLI command. define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_CACHE_HOURS', 24 ); Log rotation (since: 4.2.0) WPVulnerability stores the most recent API responses so you can review recent calls from the new log tab. Define WPVULNERABILITY_LOG_RETENTION_DAYS in wp-config.php to control how many days of entries are preserved. Supported values are 0, 1, 7, 14 or 28; using 0 disables logging entirely. define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_LOG_RETENTION_DAYS', 14 ); When the constant is present its value is enforced in the settings UI and through WP-CLI, ensuring consistent log rotation across environments. Security configuration (since: 4.3.0) WPVulnerability uses a hybrid detection approach for server software (ImageMagick, Redis, Memcached, SQLite): PHP extensions first (most secure), then shell commands as fallback (most accurate). You can control this behavior using security configuration constants in wp-config.php. Global disable of shell commands: define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_DISABLE_SHELL_EXEC', true ); Completely disables shell command usage. Falls back to PHP extensions only. Use for maximum security when accuracy loss is acceptable. Security mode (standard/strict/disabled): define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_SECURITY_MODE', 'strict' ); standard – Hybrid detection: PHP extensions first, shell commands fallback (default, best accuracy) strict – PHP extensions only, no shell commands (high security, lower accuracy) disabled – No software detection at all (maximum security) Component whitelist: define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_SHELL_EXEC_WHITELIST', 'imagemagick,redis' ); Allows shell commands only for specified components. Available components: imagemagick, redis, memcached, sqlite. Use for granular control. Examples: Maximum security (no shell commands): define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_SECURITY_MODE', 'strict' ); Only allow ImageMagick shell detection: define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_SHELL_EXEC_WHITELIST', 'imagemagick' ); Complete disable: define( 'WPVULNERABILITY_DISABLE_SHELL_EXEC', true ); All shell commands are hardcoded and validated – no user input is involved. Commands are logged for security auditing. Compatibility WordPress: 4.7 – 7.1 PHP: 7.0 – 8.5 WP-CLI: 2.3.0 – 2.12.0 Security This plugin adheres to the following security measures and review protocols for each version: WordPress Plugin Handbook WordPress Plugin Security WordPress APIs Security WordPress Coding Standards Plugin Check (PCP) Privacy This plugin or the WordPress Vulnerability Database API does not collect any information about your site, your identity, the plugins, themes or content the site has. Vulnerabilities A security vulnerability was found and fixed in version 4.2.2.1. All previous versions (3.3.0 – 4.2.1) are affected. Please update to version 4.2.2.1 or later. Found a security vulnerability? Please report it to us privately at ROBOTSTXT. Contributors You can contribute to this plugin at the WPVulnerability repository.