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GD Security Headers

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GD Security Headers

by Milan Petrovic

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Description

Configure various security-related HTTP headers, including Content Security Policy, Feature Policy, Referrer Policy and more. For CSP and XSS plugin supports report logging with 2 additional database tables to store reports from browsers.

Supported security headers

The plugin has support for the following HTTP headers:

  • Content Security Policy (CSP) – with reporting
  • XSS Protection (XXP) – with reporting
  • Feature Policy (Permissions Policy)
  • Content Type – No Sniff Policy
  • Strict Transport Security
  • Referrer Policy
  • Frame Options

For CSP, the plugin allows you to set rules for all currently supported directives, additional settings including setting the policy in Report or Live mode. The plugin also includes special extensions that can automatically fill CSP rules for popular Google services you might be using on your website (Fonts, Maps, Adsense, Analytics, TagManager and more) and other popular services (Gravatar, Instagram, PayPal Vimeo and more).

And, for Feature Policy (or Permissions Policy), the plugin allows you to set rules for all currently supported rules (over 25 rules, supported by different browsers).

FLoC / Browsing Topics

Permissions Policy rules list includes ‘browsing-topics’ rule that can be used to disable Google’s new tracking method ‘Browsing Topics API’ (which replaced ‘Federated Learning of Cohorts’ or ‘FLoC’).

Methods for adding headers

The plugin can add all the generated headers into HTACCESS file (for Apache web servers), and they will be applied to all files, not just WordPress generated content. If your website is not using Apache (or .HTACCESS), all rules are generated with each page request and will work with any server type.

And, if you don’t use Apache web server, the plugin has a panel where it displays generated headers for most popular servers: Apache, Nginx and IIS, and you can copy generated headers to add to server configuration files.

About the plugin

General Requirements

  • PHP: 7.4 or newer

PHP Notice

  • Plugin doesn’t work with PHP 7.3 or older versions.

WordPress Requirements

  • WordPress: 5.5 or newer

WordPress Notice

  • Plugin doesn’t work with WordPress 5.4 or older versions.

Basic Installation

  • Plugin folder in the WordPress plugins folder must be gd-security-headers.
  • Upload gd-security-headers folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
  • Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
  1. Plugin Dashboard

    Plugin Dashboard

  2. CSP Reports

    CSP Reports

  3. Various Headers settings

    Various Headers settings

  4. XSS Protection settings

    XSS Protection settings

  5. Content Security Policy settings

    Content Security Policy settings

  6. Global settings

    Global settings

  7. Generated security headers

    Generated security headers

  8. Tools

    Tools

  9. HTACCESS with security headers

    HTACCESS with security headers

Does plugin work with WordPress MultiSite installations?

Yes. In Multisite installation, the plugin is available for configuration on the Network level, and headers are configured for all sites in the network at once.

Where can I configure the plugin?

The plugin has its own top-level item in the WordPress admin side menu: GD Security Headers. This will open a panel with global plugin settings. In Multisite installation, a plugin panel is in the Network administration.

Can I translate the plugin to my language?

Yes. The POT file is provided as a base for translation. Translation files should go into Languages directory.

Extremely helpful

By nichu42 (nicolai42) on June 3, 2024

It's the best plug-in for setting security headers that I found so far. Easy set-up, good explanations.
But what really stands out is the local reporting feature!

Thank you very much!

Does the business

By tszesty on February 13, 2023

Easy to install and relatively easy to configure.
I only want to set CSP rules and it lets me do that easily, having the shortcuts for common rules such as Google Analytics etc is useful.

The report-only features is clear and easy to use when starting to add rules and you need to gather a list of them.

If had had one feature request it would be for the plugin to show an estimated header size.. I sometimes trip header size limits on a server when I need to add a lot of rules. If it coudl detect the server limit and warn if getting close - that'd be nice.

All in all good plugin. Really dont know why some people only gave it 1 star, I can only assume they made mistakes configuring it.

Very usefull plugin

By nadeistos on May 5, 2022

A+ on headers scan, thank you for your work 🙂

Good Error Support!

By Anonymous User (anonymized_20115841) on February 4, 2022

Thank you!

A lot of mistakes in the generated CSP

By mesmer7 on September 4, 2021

There are a lot mistakes in the generated Content-Security-Policy statement. It fails to insert the blob and data directives. It adds a semicolon and double quote at the end of the line that shouldn't be there. The only thing this plugin is really good for is the report page.

invalid characters

By advertino on June 30, 2021

The Content-Security-Policy directive 'script-src' contains 'script-src' as a source expression. Did you want to add it as a directive and forget a semicolon? The Content-Security-Policy directive name 'widget.gleamjs.io' contains one or more invalid characters. Only ASCII alphanumeric characters or dashes '-' are allowed in directive names. The Content-Security-Policy directive name 'www.googletagservices.com' contains one or more invalid characters. Only ASCII alphanumeric characters or dashes '-' are allowed in directive names. etc etc etc

Awesome plugin and easy to configure, lots of choices

By ozwest on February 20, 2021

Thank you for creating this plugin, I have been looking for something like that. It comes with so many options that you can configure, so you really can address each need a website has.

THANK YOU!!!

By ranggie4 on October 21, 2019

For someone who is not a developer, GD Security Headers (GPSH) plugin is truly a gift to WP users. It turns "Rocket Science" into just "Science 101"; still needs a bit of knowledge of what you're doing but this makes it so much easier to tweak security headers. Particularly, that option to only generate reports first for "Content-Security-Policy" before going live is how great plugins should be designed. Also love the fact that if enabled, the GPSH can write directly to the .htaccess file, and if a user prefers otherwise, they can also choose to disable that option to manually add by way of the 'Generated Headers' button. Now, I do have some feedbacks though but please bear in mind again I'm no developer. As such, the things I write might make some of the senior WP users chuckle but I'm just sharing what I think I understand. 1. GPSH writes to the .htaccess file that resides in the same folder where all WP files are kept, meaning if the WP installation is kept inside another folder i.e. /public_html/WP/, the /public_html/WP/.htaccess file will be written to instead of /public_html/.htaccess. Don't know if it changes anything but just thought I should share that some folks do move their WP installation to another folder. 2. Even though 'Add: X-XSS-Protection' has been enabled, a check on Mozilla Observatory came back with the error: "X-XSS-Protection header cannot be recognized". However, just want to add that it did come out ok when checked on Security Headers. 3. According to Security Headers, there also seems to be a new header called "Feature-Policy". Is this something that's already in GPSH? I can't find it. Also, First! 🙂

1.8 (2024.06.07)

  • New: system requirements: PHP 7.4 or newer
  • New: tested with WordPress 6.4 to 6.6
  • New: strict transport security: extra value for ‘preload’ flag
  • Edit: updated list of permissions policy elements
  • Edit: updated permissions policy, Browsing Topics replacing FLoC
  • Edit: added more information for some settings
  • Edit: changes to default values for some settings
  • Edit: d4pLib 2.8.17

1.7.1 (2023.10.29)

  • Edit: improvements to the CSP logs panel input processing
  • Edit: improvements to the CSP logs panel arguments sanitization
  • Edit: improvements to the log classes PHP code
  • Fix: union based SQL injection vulnerability with the CSP logs panel

1.7 (2023.08.24)

  • New: system requirements: PHP 7.3 or newer
  • New: tested with WordPress 6.0 to 6.3
  • Edit: various improvements to display escaping and sanitation
  • Edit: various improvements to the core code
  • Edit: d4pLib 2.8.15
  • Fix: reflected XSS vulnerability with error message handling

1.6.1 (2022.05.16)

  • New: tested with WordPress 6.0

1.6 (2022.02.04)

  • New: system requirements: PHP 7.2 or newer
  • New: system requirements: WordPress 5.3 or newer
  • New: tested with WordPress 5.9
  • New: csp addon: send reports to custom log URL
  • New: csp addon: support for ‘base-uri’ directive
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for Instagram
  • Edit: csp addon: updated various predefined rules lists
  • Edit: csp addon: updated settings information about some rules
  • Edit: d4pLib 2.8.14
  • Fix: csp addon: few typos in the rules names
  • Fix: csp addon: minor issues with saving settings

1.5 (2021.04.20)

  • New: feature/permissions policy addon: support for ‘interest-cohort’
  • New: feature/permissions policy addon: dashboard information widget
  • Edit: feature/permissions policy addon: expanded information in the settings panel
  • Edit: feature/permissions policy addon: improved values explanations
  • Fix: feature/permissions policy addon: few typos in the rules names

1.4 (2020.10.05)

  • New: csp addon: generate predefined rules for one or more CDN’s
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for WordPress.org
  • New: csp addon: support for ‘prefetch-src’ directive
  • New: feature policy addon: support for updated ‘permission-policy’ version
  • New: feature policy addon: expanded list of policies that can be included
  • Edit: csp addon: improved settings organization showing CSP rule levels
  • Edit: feature policy addon: included support information for some policies
  • Edit: d4pLib 2.8.13
  • Fix: csp addon: problem with generating the rules with ‘all’ basic value
  • Fix: feature policy addon: few minor issues with building rules

1.3 (2020.05.08)

  • Edit: csp addon: expanded some of the google based preset rules
  • Edit: d4pLib 2.8.8
  • Fix: x-frame policy: invalid headers generated when not using .htaccess
  • Fix: strict-transport-security policy: invalid headers generated when not using .htaccess
  • Fix: referer policy: invalid headers generated when not using .htaccess
  • Fix: feature policy: problem printing empty policy header

1.2 (2019.12.05)

  • New: support for feature policy header
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for Google YouTube
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for Google Tag Manager
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for Gravatar
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for Gleam
  • New: csp addon: predefined rules list for Vimeo
  • New: csp addon: auto generated rules for some special data sources
  • Edit: csp addon: expanded some Google based preset rules
  • Edit: csp addon: various improvements in the generator
  • Edit: d4pLib 2.8.2

1.1.1 (2019.08.15)

  • Edit: d4pLib 2.7.6
  • Fix: problem with saving the plugin settings in some cases

1.1 (2019.05.11)

  • New: panel with generated headers for various servers
  • New: headers panel: for apache servers
  • New: headers panel: for nginx servers
  • New: headers panel: for iis servers
  • New: new method for building the HTACCESS headers
  • Edit: improved additional headers object
  • Edit: updated rules for Google Analytics
  • Edit: do not run when WordPress runs CRON
  • Edit: removed some unused code and strings

1.0 (2019.03.21)

  • First plugin version
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