Security Tab

The Security tab allows you to configure security-related features in WHMCS.

You can access this tab at Configuration () > System Settings > General Settings or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > General Settings.

Email Verification

When you enable this, WHMCS will send an email verification notice each time a user or admin creates a new client and each time an existing client email address changes. The client must use the verification link in the email to confirm the new email address.

For more information, see Client Email Verification.

Captcha Form Protection

This is also known as image verification. It displays an image that contains letters and numbers that only humans can read, and will appear on the ticket submission, registration, and domain checker pages to help prevent automated submissions and spam. You can select whether the image verification is never displayed, always displayed, or only displayed to visitors.

Captcha Type

Default

This requires GD2 on your server and displays an image with five characters on a blue striped background. No additional configuration is required.

reCAPTCHA and Invisible reCAPTCHA

These options use Google's reCAPTCHA service. You must register here for a set of keys to use this service. Then, you can enter the keys in the appropriate boxes on this tab.

When you select one of these options, the Captcha for Select Forms checkboxes and reCAPTCHA Site Key and reCAPTCHA Secret Key text boxes will appear.
For full configuration instructions, see Google reCAPTCHA.

Required Password Strength

Set this to 0 to disable the password strength checker on the order form. For a password strength of 100, the user should enter a password that meets all three conditions:

Five characters in length.
Contains one symbol.
Contains one one uppercase letter or one number.

For more detailed information, see the /assets/js/PasswordStrength.js file.

Auto Generated Password Format

This feature is available in version 7.5 and above.

This feature allows you to control the complexity of the password generated for provisioning of new services.

The default password complexity will consist of 14 characters that contain both lower and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols. If you wish to reduce the complexity of the passwords generated, you can do so by setting this feature to generate passwords containing a combination of letters and numbers only.

Failed Admin Login Ban Time

By default, WHMCS blocks any user IP addresses that attempt to log in to the admin area with a valid username and incorrect password three or more times. The length of this ban, by default, is 15 minutes. This helps to prevent hackers from endlessly trying different password combinations in order to gain access to your admin area.

Use this setting to specify this number of minutes before the user can try again. This provides dictionary attack protection.

Set this to 0 to disable the login ban feature. The system will never attempt to ban IP addresses and the user will be able to continue to attempt to log in endlessly.
We recommend a minimum value of 1.

To remove the ban on an IP address, see Removing an IP Address Ban.

Whitelisted IPs

The IP addresses here will never be banned from accessing the Admin Area due to login failures. For example, you may wish to add your office IP address.

Whitelisted IP Login Failure Notices

When this option is disabled (default) notification emails will be sent to the Full Administrator users for failed login attempts from all IP addresses.

Enable this option to suppress failure notifications from whitelisted IPs.

Disable Admin Password Reset

When checked, this will disable the Forgotten Password link on the Admin Area login page. This replaces any previous method of disabling this option.

For more information, see How to Reset the Admin Password.

Delete Encrypted Credit Card Data

Click Delete to delete all locally-stored credit cards encrypted data from the database. This action is irreversible. Remote gateway tokens (for example, from Auth.net CIM or Stripe) are not deleted.

Delete Encrypted Bank Account Data

Click Delete to delete all locally-stored bank account encrypted data from the database. This action is irreversible.

Allow Client Pay Method Removal

When this is unchecked, only admins can remove credit card details from a client's account.

When this is checked, an option will appear in the Shopping Cart and Client Area to allow them to choose to store the payment details they are entering as a saved Pay Method for faster checkouts in future.

We recommend enabling this option.

Disable Session IP Check

This is used to protect against cookie/session hijacking and ideally should remain unchecked. However, it can cause problems for users with dynamic IP addresses or using mobile devices, which may require you to disable it by checking this.

Allow Smarty PHP Tags

We deprecated legacy Smarty tags in WHMCS 6.0, deprecated backwards compatibility in WHMCS 8.7, and will remove support entirely in WHMCS 9.0.

Because of this change, this setting will not display for new WHMCS installations on WHMCS 8.7 and later.
You must remove these tags from your custom themes and templates.

For more information, see Eliminating Legacy Smarty Tags.

Smarty 3 removed support for Smarty {php} tags. In WHMCS 6.0 through 8.7, this setting enables backwards compatibility that allows you to continue using these tags in your custom themes and templates. We strongly recommend disabling it.

For more information, see Templates and Custom PHP Logic.

Trusted Proxy Settings

The Trusted Proxies setting allows you to itemize IP addresses or IP ranges for proxies or other forwarding services so that WHMCS can accurately determine the IP address of inbound traffic.

You may find it necessary to configure these if your WHMCS installation:

is behind a proxy you control.
is behind a load balancer or firewall that modifies HTTP requests.
receives HTTP requests from a proxy or DDOS protection service like CloudFlare or BlackLotus.
is behind infrastructure that can modify the information in the link layer of a request.

These types of deployment setups will alter the value from the originating IP address to their own IP address. This is expected behaviour because it is part of standard network specifications.

Unfortunately, this also makes it look as if your client logins, admin logins, and orders are all coming from the proxy instead of the real location. When this happens, the location is masked for logging, access authorization, fraud detection, or other IP address-related purposes.

Using these settings can help to mitigate these issues. For more information, see Trusted Proxy Settings.

Cloudflare® Users
Some of Cloudflare's features are not compatible with WHMCS. Make sure that Script Minimisation and Rocket Loader are disabled for the WHMCS installation domain.

Proxy IP Header

The Proxy Header field allows you to configure the HTTP header WHMCS will use to find the IP address that is the authoritative IP address for the request.

Most proxies use X_FORWARDED_FOR, allowing you to leave the field blank. Only change this value if you are sure your proxy uses a different header; putting the wrong header into this field can cause improper recording of IP addresses.

Trusted Proxies

This list contains the IP addresses and IP address CIDR ranges of trusted proxies. WHMCS will check the header to discover the actual canonical request IP address.

To add an IP address or IP address range, click Add IP, enter the address or range and any notes, and click Add IP.
To remove an IP address or IP address range, select the desired list item and click Remove Selected. To remove multiple addresses, press Control (for Windows) or Command (for Mac) and single click the proxies you want to remove.

API IP Access Restriction

This is an advanced setting.

If you use the WHMCS API from an off-server location, you must enter the IP address here to preserve your access.

Log API Authentication

By default, successful authentications made via the API are not recorded. Checking this option will record them with Admin Area authentications in the Admin Log at Configuration () > System Logs or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Utilities > Logs. This might be useful for recording logins from your staff using our mobile apps.

CSRF Tokens

This additional security feature prevents malicious visitors to your website from forging form posts to try and access parts of the software they should not. This option is set to Enabled by default and we recommend always enabling it unless specifically advised otherwise by a member of WHMCS staff.

CSRF Tokens: Domain Checker

By default, CSRF tokens are disabled for the domain checker. This allows you to send domain information to WHMCS from an external page (for example, using the domain checker integration code on your website).

If you are not using the integration code, you can enable this option and visitors will only be able to use the built-in domain checker pages.

Documentation