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Jun
30
2010
Your Thoughts on Joomla Security Extensions?
Written by Bruce Letterle   
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One of my Joomla clients has been hacked by a phishing scheme and it has been a major pain to cleanup. Besides being behind a couple versions in their Joomla, there are multiple third party components installed.

I have been looking at a couple of Joomla security products to help in the process and to use to prevent this in the future. I was wondering if any of Steve's readers had experience with them, could tell us all about their experience with them, and possibly mention any others they would recommend? I have been looking at RS Firewall and SecureLive.

 

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Comments  

 
#1 Brian Teeman 2010-06-30 18:56
No extension will ever replace the need to ensure that your host is secure and that you are not running insecure software.
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#2 Tom Canavan 2010-06-30 19:23
Strongly recommend SecureLive. RS FW not so much...

Recommend our solution - SalvusAlerting.com to keep up on vulnerabilities .

And Brian is SPOT on - patching is most important! You should not rely an a tool to take the place of patching..
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#3 RicDay 2010-06-30 19:34
I would add to Brian's comment that being a few versions behind with the Joomla install is not a great idea.
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#4 Pierre 2010-06-30 19:58
RS Firewall Would not be oin my top 5 list
As so many users still got hack with that extension install. Cheap server cheap service
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#5 AndyT 2010-06-30 20:30
Our server got hacked (twice) recently and the first to go down were the Joomla sites. Our server ppl showed us some really important tricks to keep things tight that I believe should be standard with all joomla installs. Things like htaccess files in all upload directories to stop script execution, a replacement index2.php file that stops relative path recursion above the root, and a replacement for the default GET function that stops exploits.
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#6 Bruce Letterle 2010-06-30 21:19
Any thoughts on how to proceed to fix our current issue? My developer thought he fixed it with a component patch (Fabrik), but it came back and he has spent a large amount of time trying to find the root of the problem. I was thinking that one of the security tools could assist in diagnosing the problem and possibly preventing it in the future. We have had our own cPanel hosting servers for years and have never had this kind of issue before and we have probably 70 Joomla installations with many different extensions installed.

Thanks.
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#7 Tom Canavan 2010-06-30 21:22
@Bruce - I am a Joomla! security specialist - please feel free to contact me at help@joomlaresc ue.com and I can give you some options.

thank you

Tom Canavan
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#8 Brian Teeman 2010-07-01 00:29
Removing the vulnerability is only part of the story. See http://brian.teeman.net/tips-and-tricks/help-my-joomla-web-site-has-been-hacked.html

As for the host recommending htaccess in the subdirectories and their other recommendations NONE of those are needed on a properly configured web host - time to move if they have to make those changes
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#9 James Ameex 2010-07-01 05:37
I am following the simple instructions on file permissions for the past 3 years and all my websites are free from hack.

If you have SSH, Shell access the following commands should be able to be run from the command line to reset all your files and directories back to the server defaults of 755 and 644.

Change directory in to the top directory (" / ") of your Joomla! installation, then run these;

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
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#10 James Ameex 2010-07-01 05:47
Keep in mind that to install any extensions or templates after the actual Joomla! installation you may need to elevate the default permissions again on the appropriate directories.

If you decide to use "cache" the cache directory will need to be "Writable" to the Web-Server user to allow it to write its temporary files.

Also Follow this http://docs.joomla.org/Category:Security_Checklist

Prevention is better than Cure!
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