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Ultimate Guide to securing your Forums
by
18 Oct 2008
Rating:
 (6 votes
- 5.00 average) Securing your forums from Hackers:- 1. Always Keep your vbulletin updated to the latest version taking special care of security fixes. 2. Use the Rename admincp directory feature in config.php 3. Keep your following directories .htaccess protected. Most users can do this via Password Protect Directories option in cPanel. admincp/ modcp/ includes/ install/ Even vbulletin.com has protected the above directories. 4. Edit your config.php to make yourself an undeletable user. 5. Keep your vbulletin superadmin, FTP/SFTP and .htaccess username/password distinct and unique. You can use the Random Password Generation feature in cPanel or let sites like http://www.goodpassword.com/ generate them for you. 6. Make sure you have your vbulletin PHP files chmod 0644 and NEVER 0777. 7. Keep your forum as much clean as you can. Stay away from mods that you think won't benefit your community much. The lesser the mods, the more secure you are. 8. After uninstalling mods/hacks from vborg, do not forget to Remove the files that you uploaded with the hack. 9.Never allow HTML in posts, PM's and sigs. 10. You should NEVER upload the contents of do_not_upload folder like tools.php from the downloaded vb zip on your server. If ever you need to upload them, delete them immediately after use. 11. Never save a backup of your database under public_html as that would make your database downloadable to the world. 12. Keep your PC periodically tested against viruses, malwares and trojans. 13. For official vb staff's always updated tips and tricks to make your forums more and more secure, visit this thread. http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php?t=194701 Securing your forums from Spammers:- I think this thread by the official vb staff will be enough for taking care of our spam problems. http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php?t=275800 Some points to highlight:- 1. Use Recaptcha and http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php?t=205214 to prevent bot registrations. 2. There's no harm in getting an http://akismet.com/personal/ and enabling the option in admincp->vbulletin options->Spam Management. You may set the Spam Scanning Post Threshold to 2 or 3. 3. http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/index.php?t=148061 4. You can ban usernames containing words like sale, offer etc. in User Registration Options->Illegal Usernames 5. I would largely recommend this mod from Andy Huang (vb staff) that Detects Spam based on Keywords Weight. It works perfect on my latest 3.7.3.PL1 board and believe it or not, I could see the human spammer (from who's online ofcourse) getting an error message while creating a thread and leaving the board frustrated. Hope you find it useful, will keep it updated. Source: http://tech6.com/f51/ultimate-guide-securing-your-forums-t319/ P.S.: Please do not copy this guide. |