Bulwarden

Bulwarden is the site agent, installed on each managed WordPress site. It

exposes a signed REST API ( jgm/v1 ) that a Bulwarden hub calls to read

health and security data, run checks and trigger updates. The hub is a separate

application — it is not part of this plugin — and this plugin talks to no hub

at all until you pair it with one. On its own it sends nothing anywhere.

It is built for the person who is responsible for a site they did not build:

an agency looking after forty of them, or an owner who wants one place that

” without logging into it.

What it reports

• Site health — WordPress, PHP and plugin versions, pending updates, disk

usage, and WordPress’ own Site Health tests, collected in one snapshot.

• A full plugin and theme inventory, with each item’s version, whether it

is active, whether an update is waiting, and whether it came from

org at all — which is what lets a hub match it against a CVE feed.

• Must-use plugins, which WordPress runs on every single request with

nothing activating them and no way to switch one off from the admin. Nothing

else in wp-admin lists them properly, and dropping a file there is the tidiest

way to install a backdoor.

• Configuration-level security checks with a posture score — file editing,

directory listing, XML-RPC, debug output, and the rest of the settings that

quietly decide how exposed a site is.

• Unfinished updates. An update that already replaced a site’s files can

still fail to finish, and neither state clears itself: a pending database

schema upgrade that every administrator is sent to and the public site hides

maintenance lock from an updater that died

mid-copy. Both are reported, and both can be finished from the hub by running

exactly what WordPress itself would have run.

• Email delivery. WordPress keeps no record of the mail a site sends: when

a contact form stops delivering or an order confirmation never arrives, the

error is raised and thrown away. This counts what was attempted, what failed

and why, and reports which transport is doing it — PHP’s mail(), an SMTP

server, or the plugin that configured one. No part of any message is stored:

not the recipient, not the subject, not the body.

What it finds

• A malware scan in three layers. Every core and WordPress.org file is

verified against its published checksums, so a modified file is found

whether or not anybody has written a signature for what was put in it; then

every file is read for the code patterns webshells and injected backdoors

actually use. Findings carry the file, the line and a short excerpt.

• Backdoors that arrive dressed as an ordinary plugin — a forged

administrator login, a privileged action gated on a key baked into the file,

an account created from hard-coded credentials, users hidden from the users

list. org has no published files to check it

against, so without this a hostile one surfaced only as unverifiable.

• A plugin hiding itself. Malware that conceals a plugin does it by

answering the question before WordPress can — and the hidden plugin is then

also the one plugin whose files are never checked. The scan counts what is on

disk itself and compares.

• Server-configuration files..htaccess, php.ini and.user.ini are

the one part of a WordPress install that changes what the server does

rather than what WordPress does, and nothing in wp-admin shows them. A file

set to run before every request, a rule that makes uploaded images execute as

PHP, a redirect that only fires for search engines: all reported, with the

line. Nothing is ever changed for you — a good share of those directives are

written deliberately by a host or a security plugin, and the point is that

you get to decide which.

• Leftover files. An interrupted backup, a finished restore and a migration

plugin all leave things behind and none of them clean up: a

sql

in the web root, an installer that overwrites the site with no login. Found,

measured, and removable from the hub — and the site decides what may be

deleted, so a stale list can only ever be refused.

• Signatures that keep up. The scan’s pattern list comes from your

provider rather than from this plugin, so a new detection reaches the site in

hours rather than waiting for a release to travel a whole fleet. The plugin

itself contains no malware signatures at all — a file full of them is exactly

what a hosting provider’s own malware scanner flags — and the site keeps the

list it receives in its database.

• A scan that starts itself. When a plugin WordPress.org does not publish

appears in the plugins or must-use folder, the site starts a scan within

seconds and tells your provider what set it off, instead of waiting for the

next scheduled one. Fake plugins are how most WordPress break-ins arrive, and

a scan is a cheap thing to be wrong about: nothing is blocked, quarantined or

deleted — the site looks, and your provider decides.

What it does

• Remote core, plugin and theme updates, wrapped in maintenance mode so

visitors never see a half-updated site — and taken off the host’s PHP time

limit, so a core update on shared hosting finishes instead of being killed

part-way.

• Zero-knowledge encrypted backups. The archive is built and encrypted on

this server, under a passphrase that is never transmitted anywhere;

only the ciphertext is uploaded. Nobody — including whoever runs the hub —

can read a backup without that passphrase.

• Restores that fail safely. The same thing in reverse, and it can put back

the database alone if that is all that broke. Every table is rebuilt beside

the live one and swapped in only once it is complete, so a restore stopped by

a timeout or a server limit leaves the database exactly as it was rather than

half-replaced — and picks itself back up where it stopped. What could not be

done is counted and reported rather than discarded, so a restore that ran into

trouble says so instead of reporting success.

• Page tracing. Your provider can ask this site to render one of its own

public pages and report which file produced each line of the HTML — core, a

plugin, the theme, a must-use plugin. It answers the question nothing in

WordPress answers: which plugin adds the Google Fonts tag, or the tracking

script, or the markup nobody can find a setting for. The page is never

altered to do it.

• WP-Cron on a schedule that actually runs. A site with no visitors runs no

cron, which is how scheduled posts, order emails and licence checks quietly

stop.

• A support card on the dashboard naming whoever maintains the site, how to

reach them, and a Request help button that files a ticket with them

directly — attached to the right site, without the owner having to explain

which one.

• An activity log on the site itself, append-only, recording everything that

changed this site or sent part of it somewhere — and which side asked. Updates

installed by your provider and anything that failed with them, backups,

restores, scans, repairs, deleted leftovers, a file read off the server, a

traced page, and every change to the credentials, the passphrase or the

provider details. WordPress records what changed and never who asked, and the

answer belongs on your own server rather than only in somebody else’s console.

Pairing

On activation the plugin provisions an API key + secret. Copy the connect

string from the Bulwarden entry in the WordPress admin menu and paste

it into the hub’s “Connect a site” form. Your provider’s support details are

then pushed to the site automatically by the hub and appear on the dashboard.

No hub account yet? Until the site is paired, the plugin’s banner and settings

screen offer Start a free trial, which opens the Bulwarden hub’s pricing

net/pricing/) in a new tab. Start a trial there,

set your password from the email you receive, choose “Connect a site” in the

hub and paste the connect string. Opening that page sends nothing from this

site; it is an ordinary link.

Security

Hub → client requests are authenticated with the per-site API key and an

HMAC-SHA256 signature over the method, route, timestamp, a single-use nonce and

the body. The nonce is what makes a signature good exactly once: it is recorded

when the request arrives and refused if it comes back, so a captured request

cannot be replayed. Timestamps outside a 5-minute window are rejected outright,

which is also how long a nonce has to be remembered for. The secret never

travels on the wire — it lives only in this plugin and in the hub webapp.

Privacy

Bulwarden is a client agent: on its own it sends data nowhere. Pairing this

site with a hub (yours, or your maintenance provider’s) is an explicit,

opt-in action — you choose when to copy the connect string from the Bulwarden

screen in the WordPress admin menu and hand it to that hub. Nothing is

transmitted before that.

Once paired, data only moves in these cases:

• Health, inventory, and security checks. The paired hub reads these from

this site’s signed REST API when it polls or when a check is requested —

WordPress/plugin/theme versions and update status, a full plugin & theme

inventory, disk usage, and the configuration-level security posture score.

• Backups, only when triggered (the Settings screen’s “Back up now”

button, or a request from the paired hub): the full site is archived and

encrypted on this server with a passphrase that is never transmitted

anywhere, then the ciphertext is uploaded to the hub. Only someone who has

the passphrase can decrypt a backup — the hub operator cannot read its

contents.

• Malware scan results, only when a scan is triggered (admin- or

hub-initiated): findings (type, severity, file path, line, and a short

excerpt) are sent to the hub that requested the scan.

• Finishing an interrupted update, when the paired hub asks. Nothing is

sent in that exchange; the site runs WordPress’ own database upgrade, or

maintenance lock file, and reports the outcome.

• Server-configuration files, when the paired hub asks: the contents of

ini files, so the hub can show

what is in them and when they last changed. These are configuration, not

content — no post, page, media file or user data is read.

• Email counters, as part of the health snapshot: how many messages this

site attempted and how many failed over the last seven days, the error text

the mail server returned, and which transport is sending. No part of any

message is recorded — not the recipient, not the subject, not the body.

• A traced page, only when the hub asks for one: the HTML of a single

public page of this site, exactly as an anonymous visitor would receive it,

plus the file paths and line numbers that produced it. No file contents are

read and no logged-in view is ever rendered.

Independently of any hub pairing, this plugin verifies WordPress core and

org-hosted plugin files by comparing local file hashes against the

org.

Those requests carry only what identifies the release to look up — the

WordPress version and locale, and each plugin’s slug and version. No file

contents, hashes, URLs or user data are sent: the reference checksums come

back and the comparison happens here, on this server.

Bulwarden does not call home on activation, does not collect analytics, and

stores data on no server this site hasn’t been explicitly connected to. The

hub itself is a separate service outside this plugin’s control; consult your

provider for how it handles the data described above.

External services

This plugin connects to the services below. Nothing here runs on activation.

Your Bulwarden hub

Bulwarden is the site-side agent for a hub — the management application an

agency or site owner runs to watch and maintain a fleet of WordPress sites. The

hub is a separate product and is not part of this plugin.

net/ —

net/terms/, privacy policy:

net/privacy/. A hub can also be self-hosted, or run by the

maintenance provider you buy from, in which case this plugin talks to that

provider’s server instead and their terms and privacy policy apply.

No connection to any hub exists until you make one. You pair a site by

copying the connect string from the Bulwarden screen in the WordPress admin

menu and pasting it into the hub; before that the plugin contacts no hub at

all, and it never discovers or chooses one on its own. Once paired, data moves only in these cases:

• When the hub asks for status. It reads this site’s signed REST API and

receives WordPress/plugin/theme versions and update status, the full plugin

and theme inventory, disk usage, the results of WordPress’ own Site Health

tests, and the configuration-level security posture score.

• When a backup runs (you press “Back up now”, or the hub requests one).

The site is archived and encrypted here, with a passphrase that is never

transmitted, and only the ciphertext is uploaded. The hub operator cannot

read a backup’s contents without that passphrase.

• When a malware scan runs (started by you or by the hub). The findings —

type, severity, file path, line number and a short excerpt — are sent to the

hub that asked for the scan.

• When the hub pushes your provider’s support details — their name, logo,

support address and accent colour — on connect and whenever they change

them. Nothing is sent from the site in that exchange.

Every one of those requests is authenticated with this site’s own API key and

an HMAC-SHA256 signature; the shared secret never travels over the wire.

api.wordpress.org and downloads.wordpress.org

org-hosted plugins

org’s own public APIs at

0/ and

org/plugin-checksums/. This happens whenever a

scan runs, whether or not the site is paired with a hub.

These requests identify only the release being looked up: the WordPress version

and locale, and each installed plugin’s slug and version. No file contents,

hashes, site URL or user data are sent — the reference checksums are returned

and compared locally.

org privacy policy:

org/about/privacy/