[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #47528: Site Health: Add test for file checksums

[WordPress Trac]

#47528: Site Health: Add test for file checksums
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 Reporter:  swissspidy               |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement              |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                   |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Site Health              |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                   |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  site-health needs-patch  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by killerbishop):

 I am considering building this health monitor improvement - it seems
 straightforward enough - download the checksum list for the files for the
 current version/locale and verify the files on disk are unmodified. If
 everything is good, report that everything is in working order. I would
 build this as an async task and it would report any files that are
 modified from the original version's list as a security issue. A question
 I have is how best to test this against the master branch? The API end-
 point does not work with the trunk version. I can backport to the current
 stable branch to test it - but I'm concerned about how a unit test could
 be built and run on the trunk branch.

 Aside from my implementation question above - I do have a concern with
 this feature giving site owners a false sense of security. The CLI tool
 mentioned in the description is something that is downloaded and run
 against an install independent of the code - this makes that kind of check
 trustworthy assuming you check the CLI tool first to make sure it is not
 compromised. The site monitor will be in the code base and if it is
 compromised I fear it will be the first target of an attacker to modify
 this site health tool so that it can report everything is OK even though
 the hacker is changing files - hence my concern of a false sense of
 security. It's still possible that this tool will be helpful in cases
 where the attacker did NOT change the site health module code - but is it
 good enough to call it ''secure''?

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47528#comment:4>
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