If you enable mod_security on your apache server and you install the base-rules, you'll probably notice the WordPress blog isn't functioning correct anymore.

To fix this, you could add the following between the <vhost> tags in your vhost file that powers your blog:

<LocationMatch "/">
  SecRuleRemoveById 910006 # Google robot activity - Useful in someways but noisy for sites where you want them crawled
  SecRuleRemoveById 960015 # Request Missing an Accept Header -  Allow for Google Reader
</LocationMatch>

<LocationMatch "/wp-admin/post.php">
  SecRuleRemoveById 950006 # System Command Injection - Another rule that probably doesn't need to be disabled by everyone it stops .exe and various other extensions being passed in arguments.
</LocationMatch>

<LocationMatch "(/wp-admin/|/wp-login.php)">
  SecRuleRemoveById 950005 # Remote File Access Attempt - Probably no need to be disabled by everyone; it allows me putting /etc/ and other linux paths in posts.
  SecRuleRemoveById 950117 # Remote File Inclusion Attack - Disable to allow http:// to be passed in args
</LocationMatch>

<LocationMatch "(/wp-admin/options.php|/wp-admin/theme-editor.php|/wp-content/plugins/)">
  SecRuleRemoveById 950907 # System Command Injection
  SecRuleRemoveById 950005 # Remote File Access Attempt - Probably no need to be disabled by everyone; it allows me putting /etc/ and other linux paths in posts.
  SecRuleRemoveById 950006 # System Command Injection - Another rule that probably doesn't need to be disabled by everyone it stops .exe and various other extensions being passed in arguments.
  SecRuleRemoveById 959006 # SQL Injection Attack -
  SecRuleRemoveById 960008 # Request Missing a Host Header
  SecRuleRemoveById 960011 # GET or HEAD requests with bodies
  SecRuleRemoveById 960904 # Request Containing Content, but Missing Content-Type header

  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-17 # Detects JavaScript object properties and methods
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-20 # Detects JavaScript language constructs
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-21 # Detects very basic XSS probings
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-30 # Detects common XSS concatenation patterns 1/2
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-61 # Detects url injections and RFE attempts
</LocationMatch>

<LocationMatch "/wp-includes/">
  SecRuleRemoveById 950006 # System Command Injection - Another rule that probably doesn't need to be disabled by everyone it stops .exe and various other extensions being passed in arguments.
  SecRuleRemoveById 959006 # SQL Injection Attack -
  SecRuleRemoveById 960010 # Request content type is not allowed by policy - Allows for amongst other things spell check to work on admin area
  SecRuleRemoveById 960012 # Require Content-Length to be provided with every POST request - Same as above

  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-17 # Detects JavaScript object properties and methods
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-20 # Detects JavaScript language constructs
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-21 # Detects very basic XSS probings
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-30 # Detects common XSS concatenation patterns 1/2
  SecRuleRemoveById phpids-61 # Detects url injections and RFE attempts
</LocationMatch>

There are a lot more exceptions, but these work in my situation at the moment. If you have good additional suggestions for mod_security exceptions or idea’s on improving security within these rules for WordPress, contact me and I might update the post or write a follow-up….

Happy and safe sitebuilding…