PlugSeal

PlugSeal gives administrators granular control over what each active plugin is allowed to do, inspired by Android app permissions and Flatseal for Flatpak. Each active plugin is listed in the settings page. For each plugin, administrators can allow or deny individual permissions with immediate effect.

All permissions are allowed by default, so no existing functionality is broken until an administrator explicitly restricts it.

Permissions covered:

• db:read / db:write — database queries via $wpdb

• db:read:users / db:write:users — read and write access to user data (also covers wp_delete_user and wp_update_user)

• http:outbound — outbound HTTP requests via the WordPress HTTP API

• options:read / options:write — WordPress options via get_option / update_option (see limitations)

• email:send — sending email via wp_mail()

• cron:write — scheduling, rescheduling and unscheduling cron events

• transients:write — writing transients via set_transient()

• users:create — creating users via wp_create_user() (deletes are covered by db:write:users)

• rest:register — registering REST API endpoints via register_rest_route()

• shortcode:register — registering shortcodes via add_shortcode()

• rewrite:register — registering rewrite rules via add_rewrite_rule()

• admin:menu — adding entries to the admin menu and submenus

• dashboard:widget — adding dashboard widgets via wp_add_dashboard_widget()

• hooks:frontend — hooking into frontend hooks (wp_head, wp_footer, the_content, wp_enqueue_scripts…)

• hooks:admin — hooking into admin hooks (admin_head, admin_notices, admin_enqueue_scripts…)

• hooks:auth — hooking into authentication hooks (wp_login, wp_logout, user_register, authenticate…)

• hooks:content — hooking into content hooks (save_post, delete_post, pre_get_posts, wp_handle_upload…)

• hooks:lifecycle — hooking into plugin and theme lifecycle hooks (activated_plugin, deactivated_plugin, switch_theme…)

Honest limitations:

PlugSeal is a least-privilege tool: it limits what well-behaved, buggy or accidentally compromised plugins can do. It is not a sandbox, and deliberately malicious code can bypass or disable it.

This plugin intercepts official WordPress APIs by identifying the calling plugin via the PHP call stack. php, the call stack contains core files rather than the plugin files.

Specific limitations:

• options:read / options:write — work when a plugin calls these APIs directly from its own code (hooks, AJAX, cron). Do not block standard WordPress settings forms processed by options.php.

• Filesystem access ( file_get_contents, fopen, etc.) is not intercepted.

• Direct mysqli connections, eval(), and raw PHP file functions bypass all interceptors.

• wp_update_user() and wp_delete_user() are covered by db:write:users since they write directly to the users table.

• admin_init is intentionally excluded from hooks:admin as it is too critical to block safely.

• transients:write — only enforced when transients are stored in the database. With a persistent object cache (Redis, Memcached) WordPress keeps them in the cache and PlugSeal cannot intercept them.

• Only plugins activated on the site are managed. Themes, must-use plugins and network-activated plugins are not.

• Hooks, shortcodes, REST routes and menus are removed when WordPress loads them; anything a plugin registers afterwards is not affected.