WooCommerce, the leading e-commerce platform built on WordPress, powers over 27% of online stores worldwide. While this widespread popularity is a testament to its power, it also makes it a prime target for hackers.
In fact, 90% of hacked CMS sites are WordPress-based, often due to common security oversights like outdated plugins, weak passwords, and insecure file permissions.
This is where a WooCommerce security audit steps in to help identify and patch these weaknesses, safeguarding your business.
Why Does your WooCommerce Site Need a Security Audit?
Preventing Data Breaches
WooCommerce deals with and stores sensitive customer information, such as payment or personal information. Security audits can help identify issues that could cause data exposure and lead to financial or reputational damage.
Safeguarding Against Hacks and Vulnerabilities
Regular security audits can test the application for outdated software, weak entry points, or other security misconfigurations that the attackers can exploit. Critical issues like Broken Access Control or SQL Injection can be identified before time and resolved to prevent exploitation.
Staying Compliant with Regulations
To avoid compliance violations and penalties, the WooCommerce plugin must be regularly audited according to the guidelines provided by various compliances, such as GDPR, PCI DSS, or CCPA. This also ensures that the application is not affected by risks in the WooCommerce plugin.
WooCommerce plugin security helps you detect missing security measures on the site and strengthen them before a disaster occurs.
Make your Web Application the safest place on the Internet.
With our detailed and specially curated Web security checklist.
Step-by-Step WooCommerce Security Audit
Step 1: Basic CMS Checks
Begin testing your WooCommerce instance with basic CMS checks, such as using default usernames and passwords, using weak password policies, and allowing users unnecessary access. Ensure the application performs strict input validation to avoid critical vulnerabilities like SQL Injection or code execution.
Step 2: Administrator Rights and Files
The next step is testing the administrative and overall access given to the users. If the file permissions are not set correctly, attackers can gain access to the core files. Core files contain all information about the website, and malware can be installed using those backdoors. Thus, appropriate file permissions will protect your website from unwanted access.
Step 3: Login Methods and User Access
After testing authorization, authentication tests are performed to check if the number of login attempts is limited, if account lockout mechanisms are in place, and if Multi-Factor Authentication has been implemented. Issues under authentication testing must be tested thoroughly to ensure valid users get access to important files and application controls.
Step 4: Platform and Plugin Updates
To test the issues with the platform and plugin, ensure that WordPress, its themes, dependencies, and all the plugins, including WooCommerce, are updated to the latest versions. Older versions can give way to vulnerabilities and risks that can be exploited. The best way to update is to host a staging environment.
Step 5: Payment Gateway Configurations
Test the payment gateway for any security misconfigurations during or after the setup. Ensure that the gateway used for handling the transactions is secure and compliant with regulatory requirements. Test whether SSL encryption is implemented and configured properly to protect user data in transmission.
Tools to Perform a WooCommerce Security Audit
Zed attack proxy
ZAP is an open-source tool developed by OWASP. It is very easy to use and helps you detect a wide array of vulnerabilities in your web apps and servers. ZAP provides features like automatic scanning, authentication testing support, dynamic SSL certificates, web socket testing support, etc.
Wapiti
Wapiti is a black-box testing tool that efficiently finds vulnerabilities for a Woo Commerce Security Audit. This tool helps you look for critical vulnerabilities like database injection, CRLF Injection, sensitive file disclosure, weak ‘.htaccess’ configurations, and command execution, among several others.
W3af
W3AF, built on Python, this tool is an effective and popular web testing framework. It is capable of detecting more than 200 types of vulnerabilities, such as buffer overflow, blind SQL Injection, insecure DAV configurations, CSRF vulnerabilities, and more.
Get a Professional Audit from Astra
WooCommerce security audits are necessary to ensure the safety of your customers and protect your website. You can either do it yourself or leave the entire audit to an expert from Astra, who will make sure that your entire website is checked thoroughly for any vulnerabilities without you having to face any hassle.
Astra Security offers professional WooCommerce Security audit & Penetration Testing services tailored for your website by testing over 10,000 test cases. Security experts do our Vulnerability Assessment & Penetration Testing (VAPT) program with the right mix of automated tools and human intelligence.
Astra Pentest is built by the team of experts that helped secure Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, and Buffer
Final Thoughts
Adopting a proactive approach towards security and performing regular WooCommerce security audits helps you protect the integrity and security of the store.
Primarily focusing the testing on payment gateways and authorization allows you to safeguard user data and protect the WooCommerce store from data breaches of any kind. Ensure the security of your store with a mix of automatic and manual pentesting by professionals and build a resilient online presence.
FAQs
Does WooCommerce have security issues?
WooCommerce itself is generally secure, but like any software, it can have vulnerabilities, especially if not updated or configured correctly. A WooCommerce security audit can identify potential weaknesses, misconfigurations, and outdated plugins, helping you proactively address security risks and protect your online store.
