FIX | The Blog Pros

The Challenges of Building a FIX Protocol

The first day I was introduced to FIX was when I worked at an investment bank in London as a developer, I was told to write a feed handler to retrieve market data. Bear in mind that at this time, I knew nothing about FIX, apart from googling it for about 10 mins on the internet. With a touch of overconfidence and slight arrogance, I set to work coding a direct socket connection to the remote FIX endpoint, thinking, “How hard could it be?”

So, What Is FIX?

Financial Information eXchange (FIX) is both a market data format and a protocol: it is used by investment banks to place orders and receive market data and has become a global language in financial trading. The format of a FIX message controls how it is encoded. All FIX messages start with 8=FIX, which denotes the start of a FIX message. They then go on to list key and value pairs. The keys are represented as numbers (known as TagNumbers) followed by a = delimiter to delimit the values. Each key=value combination is then delimited by the \u0001 character, which is sometimes visually represented as either ^ or |. The value is often written in a semi-human-readable format. I say semi-human readable because most of the time it is human-readable, but all too often, FIX will use a single character to denote a state or type of message. These characters are not always that obvious. I agree that the character B for "Buy" and S for "Sell" makes sense, but other characters are used that make no sense. For example, D denotes a "New Order Single" message, which is a message that is often used when you wish to place an order with your counterparty.

By default, WordPress makes certain directories writeable so that you and other authorized users on your website can easily upload themes, plugins, images, and videos to your website.

However this capability can be abused if it gets in the wrong hand such as hackers who can use it to upload backdoor access files or malware to your website.

These malicious files are often disguised as core WordPress files. They are mostly written in PHP and can run in the background to gain full access to every aspect of your website.

Sounds scary, right?

Don’t worry there is an easy fix for that. Basically, you’d simply disable PHP execution in certain directories where you don’t need it. Doing so, any PHP files will not run inside those directories.

In this article, we will show you how to disable PHP execution in WordPress using the .htaccess file.

Disabling PHP Execution in Certain WordPress Directories Using .htaccess File

Most WordPress sites have a .htaccess file in the root folder. This is a powerful configuration file used to password protect admin area, disable directory browsing, generate SEO friendly URL structure, and more.

By default, the .htaccess file located in your WordPress website’s root folder, but you can also create and use it inside your inner WordPress directories.

To protect your website from backdoor access files, you need to create a .htaccess file and upload it to your site’s /wp-includes/ and /wp-content/uploads/ directories.

Simply create a blank file on your computer by using a text editor like Notepad (TextEdit on Mac). Save the file as .htaccess and paste the following code inside it.

<Files *.php>
deny from all
</Files>

Now save the file on your computer.

Next, you need to upload this file to /wp-includes/ and /wp-content/uploads/ folders on your WordPress hosting server.

You can upload it by using an FTP client or via File Manager app in your hosting account’s cPanel dashboard.

Once the .htaccess file with the above code is added, it will stop any PHP file to run in these directories.

Using this .htaccess trick helps you harden your WordPress security, but it is not a FIX for an already hacked WordPress site.

Backdoors are cleverly disguised and can already be hidden in plain sight.

If you want to check for possible backdoors on your website, then you need to activate Sucuri on your website.

Sucuri is the best WordPress security plugin on the market. It scans your website for possible threats, suspicious code, malware, and vulnerabilities.

It also effectively blocks most hacking attempts to even reach your website by adding a firewall between your site and suspicious traffic.

Most importantly, if your WordPress site gets hacked, then they will clean it up for you. To learn more, you can check our Sucuri review because we have been using their service for years.

We hope this article helped you to learn how to disable PHP execution in certain WordPress directories to harden your website security. If you are looking for a complete guide, check out our ultimate WordPress security guide.

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