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wp-config.php.bak

Security Researcher Detected: You might have ended up here because your site vulnerability scanner found something interesting. Hi! I'm a security engineer and I'm having a good time interacting with the people and bots that are interested in information security.

You will hopefully find this site is well-secured and I'm not interested in being hacked. I'm interested in learning about how people try to hack me, though.

What is this endpoint?

wp-config.php.bak

WordPress Configuration Backup

What an attacker could do

A backup of wp-config.php served as plain text exposes the WordPress database name, host, username, password, and secret auth keys, giving an attacker direct database access and the ability to forge session cookies.

How to defend it

Remove editor/backup artifacts from the webroot and configure the server to deny requests for .bak, .old, and similar backup extensions.

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Want to dive deeper into this topic? Check out the official documentation.

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