RSS Aggregators, Dangers and Security Measures

Introduction

RSS aggregators are a popular way to redistribute content from your website to other platforms and users. However, while they offer convenience and better content distribution, they also expose your site to various risks. Improperly configured RSS feeds can lead to copyright infringements, increased exposure to AI scraping bots, spam, and even security threats such as brute force or DDoS attacks.

Main Risks of RSS Aggregators

• Copyright infringement: without considering the damage to your site reputation, since creating duplicate content issues and damaging your SEO, if you don't have explicit permission to republish content from an RSS feed you can be infringing the copytight of a third party website.
• AI bots and scrapers: Automated systems scrape RSS feeds to feed machine learning models or republish content without attribution.
• Spam and brute force attacks: Public RSS feeds can attract malicious actors scanning for vulnerabilities in your website, leading to increased spam and brute force login attempts.
• DDoS and overload: Bots continuously pulling your RSS feed without limit can overload your server, consuming bandwidth and CPU.

How to Protect Your WordPress RSS Feed with .htaccess

Block Unwanted User Agents

Add these rules to your .htaccess file in the root of your WordPress installation to block some common scrapers:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (ahrefs|semrush|mj12bot|dotbot|screaming frog|wget|curl|python|scrapy|aiohttp) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]
</IfModule>

Limit Access to RSS Feed

You can restrict RSS feed access only to known browsers and block bots completely:

<Files feed/>
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Mozilla" good_ua
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from env=good_ua
</Files>

Rate Limiting via .htaccess

On some servers, you can apply rate limiting using mod_evasive or mod_security to mitigate scraping and DDoS attempts on your RSS feed.

Hardening with WordFence Plugin

• Enable Rate Limiting in WordFence to block excessive access to your RSS URLs (e.g., /feed/, /rss/, /category/feed/).
• Block known bad IP addresses and set automated bot detection rules in WordFence's Firewall.
• Monitor for 404 errors on feed URLs, as they may indicate bot scans for vulnerabilities.
• Activate the option to block access to XML-RPC, which is often targeted by scrapers and brute force attacks.

Integrating Cloudflare for Extra Protection

• Enable the Web Application Firewall (WAF) to block common bot patterns before they reach your server.
• Set Page Rules to challenge or block suspicious access to feed URLs such as /*/feed/*.
• Use Cloudflare's Bot Fight Mode to mitigate non-browser requests scraping your content.
• Configure Rate Limiting rules in Cloudflare to limit excessive requests to RSS endpoints.

Best Practices

• Always monitor server logs to detect spikes in RSS feed requests.
• Consider disabling RSS feeds if your website doesn’t require them publicly.
• Protect your content with a copyright notice and consider adding full copyright statements to your RSS content.
• Regularly audit your WordPress site security with plugins and external services.

Conclusion

RSS aggregators provide a useful way to distribute your content, but they also expose your WordPress website to various security and copyright risks. By configuring your .htaccess file, using the WordFence security plugin, and implementing Cloudflare protection, you can minimize these risks and keep your website secure against malicious actors.