CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpwordpresssecuritywordpress-theming
Abdallah Sabri
Abdallah Sabri

Reputation: 441

How to disable author query in WordPress

In wordpress, when you hit url like the following:

http://www.example.com/?author=1

If the author ID is valid then they will be redirected to the author URL, for example:

http://www.example.com/author/username

Then the hacker start attacking the username. How could I disable (?auther=xx) query in url?

for example redirect the request to another page like 404 (not found) page

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2492

Answers (2)

dmkizer
dmkizer

Reputation: 11

I believe that dingo-d has it right, above, referring to the 301 redirect. I have installed 301 redirects on several Wordpress sites to accomplish this. I redirect [domain]/?author=* with a wildcard to my 404 page. I have watched my activity logs before and after implementing this. The malicious login attempts immediately switch from valid user names to the generic "admin."

Upvotes: 1

prettyfly
prettyfly

Reputation: 3130

Add the following filter to your functions.php file;

add_action('template_redirect', 'disableAuthorUrl');

function disableAuthorUrl(){
    if (is_author())) {
       wp_redirect(home_url());
       exit();
    }
}

This will check all incoming requests to see if the page requested is an author page, and if so, redirect to the homepage, or wherever else you choose.

Upvotes: 0

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