Security Top Tips - Why you shouldn't use BREACHED login info in your application

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How to Prevent Laravel App from Hacked

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Being a Website developer people would have faced hacking of their websites at least once in their lifetime. We might think that having a popular Framework like Laravel can protect your site, but some hidden loopholes or changes in any code can make the hackers enter easily into our Server. But don’t worry, I’m here to tell you “How to protect Laravel site from Hackers” and also will help you to improve Laravel Security. In addition, I will explain to you about symptoms of Laravel Hacking and the types of hacking attacks.

Advantages of using an Open Source Framework

  1. It will help in improving and introducing new concepts.
  2. Easy reliable as it is very strong.
  3. It comes with a good amount of Security.

Reason for the attack

Modifying the location of the index.php from the public folder can expose all the core files (Vendor folder) in the server. This makes a clear path for the attackers to attack the server.

How to prevent Laravel for attackers/hackers?

To prevent the Laravel for hacking, you have to un follow the direct access of the files from the webserver and hide .env file or code from the server.

Why do we protect the .env file?

Even though Laravel is highly protective, that can be hacked due to some changes happening in our server. You may have doubts like how is that possible? Or protecting a .env file can stop attackers from these kinds of activities? Obviously yes to these questions. Because the .env file has all the data related to the applications and the database and it is openly available publicly. So it’s easy for hackers to access sensitive data on the website. So, the first thing is you have to do the following procedure given below and after collecting that you have to hide the .env file.

Do to that,

  1. Select the .htaccess file and choose Edit.
  2. Now you can see the code, don’t change anything on that code.
  3. Just scroll down and enter the following code to stop access to the files.

# Disable index view

Options -Indexes

# Hide a Specific file

<Files .env>

Order allow, deny

Deny from all

</Files>

This code helps to stop access 

How to hide a file?

After completing the process:

  1. Select the .env file and choose Edit.
  2. Then tick hides the file option and saves changes.
  3. This will hide the file from the public view.

Common risk

Let me tell you what are the common risk which can attack your Websites due to easy accessibility:

  • SQL Injection

This will twist/change the login algorithms and destroy data.

  • Denial of Service Attacks

This will stop the user from entering into their resources.

  • Cross-site Scripting XSS

This injects code into the web pages viewed by the clients and other users.

  • Cookie/Session Poisoning

Modifies cookies on the site to achieve unauthorized access.

  • Form Tampering

This changes the form of data.

  • Code Injection

This injects codes like PHP, Python, which installs backdoors and reveal sensitive information from the server.

  • Defacement

Modifies the Website pages and redirects all the pages to a single page that contains the attacker’s message.

The Symptoms of Hacking

If you doubt that your Laravel is being hacked, just check whether you have seen any of these following steps:

  1. The website seems very slow and often shows error messages.
  2. You receive “your account has been suspended” message.
  3. A new admin appears in the login database.
  4. The website will be blacklisted by the search engine.
  5. Website pages will be redirected to some malicious websites.
  6. The content on the website Gibberish due to hacking.

I hope this article will be useful to protect your Laravel from hackers /attackers. And I have given some more extract information about symptoms of hacking and the common threats used for hacking. Thanks for reading this article. If you have any doubts, leave that in the comment box below.