Can someone explain how they deal with file change detection

  • Resolved suecarroll

    (@suecarroll)


    7 years, 5 months ago

    I have recently installed this plugin and am not sure if it is the right one for me.

    I wanted a security plugin with a firewall which checked for file changes. I have the intermediate firewall set up and that is ok. I don’t understand, however, the file change scan. When a scan has been carried out so far a large number of files changes have been detected.
    Last scan:
    – 40-50 files added, mostly autoptimize cache files
    – about 70 files changes, mostly from one plugin, with a handful of cache files.

    Surely people don’t have the time to check every one of these files on a weekly basis and, if not, what is the point of the file scan?

    Are there certain file/directory changes that it is safe to ignore?

    Is there a quick way to deal with file changes that I am unaware of?

    There is a good chance I am missing something here so I would be happy for someone to put me right.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • hi @suecarroll;
    autoptimize will add files as you go, so anything in wp-content/cache/autoptimize/ can (should) be ignored. although in that case if malicious software would plant files there, you would not be warned of those. so it’s a choice between receiving false positives and not receiving real warnings.

    hope this clarifies,
    frank (ao dev)

    Thread Starter suecarroll

    (@suecarroll)

    Thanks Frank. I wonder what most people do about caching files? It seems this feature is not very useful if people are just going to ignore the files (speaking as someone who had a site hacked a while ago – they got in via a file but can’t remember now which one)

    I’ll leave that interesting question to the smart all-in-one-wp-security-and-firewall people to respond ??

    Plugin Contributor mbrsolution

    (@mbrsolution)

    @suecarroll, as far as I know most people ignore cache files and or cache file directories as @optimizingmatters stated above. This is because cache files tend to change often in accordance to your cache plugin set up. I myself choose to ignore cache files. However it is up to you how you want to set up this feature in the plugin.

    I will state that I consider my site to be almost bullet proof. I have various factors added in my front end to stop people from logging in and I think it would make it very challenging for anyone to break through. All the plugins I use in my site are well maintained and up to date including the theme. I also use autoptimize ?? which is a fantastic plugin. And as I stated above I don’t monitor the cache files in the Scanner settings.

    Let me know if you need more information or help.

    Kind regards

    Thread Starter suecarroll

    (@suecarroll)

    Thanks, at least that gives me a framework to work through. In future I will exclude cache files from the scan

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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