Securing Your Joomla Website - By Mike Carson www.joomlashowroom.com - Joomla Day New York City December 5th, 2010

1. Securing Your Joomla Website Mike Carson http://joomlashowroom.com Joomla! Day New york CityDecember 4th & 5th, 2010

2. Is Joomla Secure? YES! Joomlais 100% Secure. Untilyouinstallit on a server

3. WhyWorry? BecauseJoomladoesn’t come with a TrunkMonkey.

4. What Can I Do? Understandthatsecurityis a layeredapproach Select a properhostingcompany Follow best practice guidelines Use the toolsthat are available TAKE IT SERIOUSLY! MAKE IT MANDATORY!!!

5. Initial Steps Change the jos_databaseprefix RemoveAdmin user Turn OFF the WYSIWYG editor Subscribe to the Joomla Security Updates list

6. Let’s Talk Tools Security startsat home Use a good anti-virus software likeKaspersky Use a passwordgenerator/managerKeepass.info or keepassx.org Browser Updates Operating System updates Use secure SFTP toolsWinSCP, Filezilla, Dreamweaver, Putty SSH

7. Quality Joomla Hosting Cloudaccess.net Rochenhost.com Plexicloud.com 1and1.com Simplweb.com Stayawayfrom godaddy.com, siteground.com, dreamhost.com, Yahoo Web Hosting General rule of thumb: You getwhatyoupay for!

8. Permissions Use proper permissions on files and directories. They should never be 777 What they should be: Files = 644 Directories = 755

9. Akeeba Backup Akeeba Backup Akeebabackup.com 2 versions to choosefrom (Core and Pro) Backup your entire site and its database with a single click Automatic Backups (Cron and Cron-less) Offsite Backups to S3, Dropbox, Rackspace, FTP Test your backups once in a while

10. Akeeba AdminTools AkeebaAdmin Tools Pro – Akeebabackup.com IntegratedJoomla Updater Web Application Firewall IP Whitelist/Blacklist, Bad Words Filter, Security Exceptions Log Htaccess File Maker – Experts ONLY! Permissions Fixer

11. OtherAdminSecurity Tools Jsecure Plugin - joomlaserviceprovider.com JomDefender – corePHP.com JooReCapchta - joomla.stefysoft.com sh404sef – dev.anything-digital.com Secure Live – securelive.net PHP Security Suite - opensource-excellence.com

12. Additional Suggestions Completelyremoveunused extensions Leave FTP File Layer disabled From the Joomla administrator area make sure the Register Globals is set to off Avoid using PHP4

13. DisasterRecovery Plan Create a DisasterRecovery Plan A list of the sites you maintain A list of user names and passwords for your sites The databases names, server addresses or IP, user names and passwords, that are used for your list of sites FTP user names and passwords for each of your sites Your web hosts tech support number Have a backup web host decided in case for some reason you need to move quickly Know how to get into your domain registrar so you can change Name Servers if needed Name, number, email of a web professional that may be able to help restore your systems if needed Practice a FULL recovery

14. So noweverything is all good, right? UH OH

15. I’ve Been Hacked Don’t Panic! Remember? You have a disasterrecovery plan. Login and change youradminpassword. Browseyour files for anythingobviouslyunusualthatdoesn’tbelong. Grabyourlatest few backups and compare those to make sure they do not alsocontainanypayloads. Downloadyour server log files. Check you logs for IP's calling suspicious files or attempting POST commands to non-form's. Notify your host and work with them to clean up the site, and to make sure there are no back doors to your site or hire a professional to help Restore yourwebsitewith a clean backup copy. EnsureJoomla and your extensions are all using the latest versions.

16. DatabasePasswords Changingyour super adminpassword in MySQL Go to adamek.biz/md5-generator.php

18. Then browse the Super Admin record you want to change

19. Then paste your new MD5 encrypted password into the password field.

21. Full security audit services are available for your Joomla website. Visit http://joomlashowroom.com