> > Fear not, you can also introduce infinite loops with a good old code editor
> Well, when a developer writes code in an editor, they probably are working in a development environment with tests and version control, etc.
This can be done with WP, but you are totally right and I should also have pointed out that the consultant should have asked for a staging environment or at least set up his modifications on his local copy of the site. He/she worked on prod and that's a big no-no.
> Why is there a web editor that changes the application's own running code? And why in the world would I expect that that would exist, and be on by default, for me to have to go and figure out how to turn off?
Ah, I think I now see where you are coming from. but:
> Marketing people insisted on WordPress so we reluctantly put it off in its own isolated network and expected bad things to happen. And, they did...
Well, if op team was aware of WordPress's reputation (and rightly so) it's a little bit on them to preemptively mitigate some of the risks especially if marketing team isn't aware of it. I suppose there wasn't enough hands on deck to do so deep enough at the time it happened or maybe office politics got in the way, etc.
Anyway, some security practices for WordPress suggest to change some file ownership (so only sysadmin can do maintenance work for core, plugins and themes via wp-cli), see https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/hardening-wordpr... which lead me to suggest that git may not be the best option for backup (since it doesn't preserve user ownership). Something like Borg, Restic or a file system based backup/veam/etc. is a better option.
> Why is there a web editor that changes the application's own running code?
Well, in the before time, it would give anyone running the site the ability to modify theme/plugins if they didn't have access to FTP.
Totally agree, I don't see any reasons to keep this around. But any plugins or themes can add a section in the dashboard with a web editor able to modify anything the webserver can modify, so... it's mitigation more than prevention if themes and plugins upload aren't locked.
I hope I am not coming off too strong ? I would likely do the same kind of mistakes if I was asked to host a django something.
