ARGUS WordPress Defence

Automatic WordPress security. A local firewall, malware and file-integrity scanning, vulnerability protection, and scheduled backups — protecting your site with zero manual configuration required.

Version: 7.23.1 Requires: WordPress 6.0+, PHP 7.4+ License: GPLv2 or later

What it does

• Firewall — blocks malicious requests (SQL injection, cross-site scripting, remote code execution, XXE, SSRF, and more) before they reach your site.
• Scanner — regularly checks WordPress core, plugins, and themes for suspicious files and integrity changes, and quarantines confirmed threats instead of just reporting them.
• Vulnerability Protection — checks your installed plugins, themes, and WordPress core against known security issues.
• Backups — scheduled recovery points for your site's database and files, stored outside the web root.
• Cache & Performance — an optional page cache that can make your site faster, built to never interfere with the firewall or bans.
• Automatic Updates — ARGUS always keeps itself up to date, and can optionally do the same for every other installed plugin and theme.
• Global Threat Intelligence (optional) — share reputation data about the IP addresses ARGUS blocks with a global network, and benefit from what every other connected site has already seen. Off by default — turning it on is a single click, no fields to fill in, and its own settings page shows exactly what is and isn't shared.

Everything except Global Threat Intelligence works out of the box. There is nothing to configure to get protected.

Status

This is a self-distributed release: it is not listed on WordPress.org and has not gone through that team's plugin review process (a submission is planned for the future — this release is not it).

• Not independently security audited. It has been reviewed internally (code review, static checks, a manual security pass over authentication/authorization/nonce/SQL handling), but no third-party security audit or penetration test has been performed.
• No CI pipeline yet. Tests are run manually before each release, not on every commit.
• Tested in sandbox/disposable WordPress environments. Verification so far — install, activation, all admin pages, deactivation, uninstall — was done on disposable WordPress instances, not on live production sites.
• Automatic updates for ARGUS itself are opt-in, not on by default. The signed-update mechanism is real and live (this release's own manifest is signed and hosted in this repository) -- add two constants to wp-config.php to turn it on. See Updating below for the exact lines and how to verify it's working. Automatic updates for other plugins/themes on your site, if you enable that option in Settings, use WordPress's own built-in update system and work without any extra setup.

Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP (see Releases below).
2. In your WordPress admin: Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the downloaded ZIP, then Install Now.
3. Click Activate.

That's it — ARGUS Defence begins protecting your site automatically. A short Welcome screen walks through what's already active and a couple of optional choices (a site-type template, Global Threat Intelligence). A new ARGUS Defence menu also appears in your wp-admin sidebar with an overview of your site's protection status.

Updating

Automatic — add these two lines to wp-config.php (above the /* That's all, stop editing! */ line):

define( 'ARGUS_WPD_UPDATE_MANIFEST_URL', 'https://git-cloud.weboria.eu/Weboria/argus-wp-defence/raw/branch/main/manifest.json' );
define( 'ARGUS_WPD_UPDATE_PUBLIC_KEY', 'jBQFZLG+fvtW9y7kmhJa4BTBw8u3lmxbgOcF2ptEhFs=' );

From then on ARGUS checks for updates every few hours and installs anything newer automatically, after verifying its Ed25519 signature and SHA-256 checksum. To check immediately instead of waiting: ARGUS Defence → Settings → Automatic Security Updates → Check for Updates Now, which also shows the current status (last check, last successful update, last failure).

Manual — download the new release ZIP and upload it through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin — WordPress will offer to replace the existing version. Works with or without the automatic option configured.

Uninstalling

Deactivate and delete the plugin from the Plugins page as you would any other WordPress plugin. All ARGUS Defence data (settings, scan history, quarantined files, database tables) is removed automatically — nothing is left behind.

Releases

Each release is published as a ZIP with an accompanying SHA-256 checksum. Verify the download before installing it on a production site:

sha256sum argus-wordpress-defence-X.Y.Z.zip

Compare the result against the checksum published alongside that release.

Source layout

argus-wordpress-defence.php   Plugin entry point (admin UI, cron, activation)
mu-loader/                    Tamper-resistant enforcement core (installed as a Must-Use
                               plugin, keeps running even if the main plugin is deactivated)
includes/                     Firewall, ban/policy engine, scanner, quarantine, backups,
                               vulnerability intelligence, cache
admin/                        wp-admin dashboard and settings pages
bin/                          Release packaging and signing tools (not shipped in the
                               plugin ZIP)

Support

Please open an issue in this repository.

License

GPLv2 or later. See LICENSE.