WordPress security can be intimating, especially if it is not your cup of tea. There are quite a few plugins to choose from and when you read a security article you cannot understand half of the terms used.
If this sounds familiar this glossary is for you. It is a collection of WordPress security terminology and words, that explains what they are in very simple words.
- Activity Log (audit trail)
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Backdoor
- Blacklist
- Browser cookie
- Brute force attack
- Capabilities
- Cross-site scripting
- Defacement
- Denial of service
- Directory listing
- Exploit
- Firewall
- Fuzzer / fuzzing
- Hijacked
- htaccess file
- HTTP cookie
- Information disclosure
- Malware
- Man in the middle attack
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
- Permissions
- Phishing attack
- Principle of least privilege
- Privilege escalation
- Privileges
- Proof of concept
- Scam
- Security advisory
- Security hardening
- Security scan
- Signature-based scanning
- Source code audit
- SQL Injection
- Trojan
- Two-factor authentication (2FA)
- User roles
- Virus
- VPN
- Vulnerability
- Whitelist
- WordPress firewall / web application firewall (WAF)
- Zero-day vulnerability
