Security Tab

From WHMCS Documentation

Revision as of 21:48, 20 January 2022 by SarahK (talk | contribs)



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

If someone makes three incorrect attempts to log in to the WHMCS Admin Area, this is the time in minutes before they can try to log in again (dictionary attack protection). To remove the ban on an IP address, see How to Unban Your IP.

Set this to 0 to disable the login ban feature.

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 for the same.

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

The use of {php} tags is depreciated in WHMCS v6 and above, but legacy support can be enabled here during a transition period. We recommend keeping this option disabled unless you specifically require 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 utilize the trusted proxy settings 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.

To counteract this, the details of your proxy service can be entered into these fields.

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

Sample Trusted Proxies

Use this field to add and remove IP addresses and IP address CIDR ranges of trusted proxies. WHMCS will check the header to discover the actual canonical request IP address.

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 under Configuration () > System Logs > Admin Log or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Utilities > Logs > Admin Log. 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.