Paul is a front- & backend developer with a passion in security, who creates designs occasionally. After starting out with WordPress plugin vulnerabilities, he joined the bug bounty world and now also a white hat hacker in the Detectify Crowdsource community. As he has acquired his knowledge through community resources himself and wants to make the internet a safer place, he shares his know-how to give something back and in this case tips on WordPress plugin security.

The subject of the cyber security talent shortage has been over-reported to the extent that no one wants to talk about it anymore. Even more than that, the only solution that really ever gets mentioned is developing more university cyber programs. But that solution is dead wrong—or at least it misses the crux of the issue completely.

On July 11, 2019, the National Governors Association released a new publication on the topic of cyber disruption response plans across America. The report examines state cyber disruption response plans, providing recommendations for state officials who want to create or review their own response plans.

Welcome back to the next edition of “Hacking WordPress”. Find Part 1 if you missed it. Let me start with a PSA message. It is illegal to hack, log in to, penetrate, take over or even hack, a system or network of systems without the explicit permission of the owner. Criminal hacking is illegal and punishable under Federal Law. I am describing methods to learn more about WordPress so you can protect your sites better.

The recently discovered BlueKeep RDP vulnerability reminds us yet again (as if needed to be reminded) that monitoring RDP is not a luxury but an absolute necessity. Many organizations still expose RDP ports to the Internet, making it a prime target for attacks. But even when RDP is only available internally it can still pose a threat – especially for large networks.

Amazon Web Services recently announced new capabilities in the AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. Users are now capable of tunneling SSH (Secure Shell) and SCP (Secure Copy) connections directly from a local client without the need for the AWS management console. For years, users have relied on firewalls and bastion hosts in order to securely access cloud assets, but these options have security and management overhead tradeoffs.

Cybersecurity is finally reaching the shop floor in earnest thanks to new technology that works with—not against—the legacy equipment that runs most industrial control systems (ICS). That being said, industrial companies and organizations in sectors like manufacturing, energy, utilities, transportation and water treatment can be slow to adapt to the new cybersecurity tools at their disposal because they present a new way of operating in an industry that’s set in its ways.

Wouldn’t it be an easier life if we didn’t have to worry about the exploitation of vulnerabilities in solutions and software on which we have spent good time and resources? A world where correctly configured systems configured were left alone to perform their functions until they became redundant and/or needed replacing? It is a beautiful dream. Sadly, it’s also a highly unrealistic one.

There are times where an attacker can hack a system and yet nothing is sent back, and this is classified as a blind vulnerability. This article will explain blind vulnerability detection and how Detectify’s scanner detects them: If we simplify web hacking, it usually means that an attacker is sending some data from their computer to a server, the server processes the data and then sends something back to the attacker.