Protect Your Server from ImageMagick Vulnerability

A security vulnerability in ImageMagick was announced on May 4th, 2016. If your Linux server uses ImageMagick to handle image uploads, you should make changes to your server immediately to protect it from a possible compromise.

Am I affected?

Not all hosting products are affected by the ImageMagick vulnerability.

If you turned automatic updates off on your cPanel server, you may still be vulnerable.

Protect your server

To protect your server from the ImageMagick vulnerability, you need to make changes to your policy.xml file for ImageMagick.

1. Connect to your server with SSH.
2. Locate your policy.xml file for ImageMagick. The path to this file may be different depending on your Linux version.

   Linux Versions	Path
   Ubuntu Debian 7 CentOS RHEL Arch Linux	/etc/ImageMagick/policy.xml
   Debian 8 Fedora	/etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml
   FreeBSD	/usr/local/etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml
   CentOS 6 with cPanel/WHM	/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml

3. Open this policy.xml file in a text editor:
   

   sudo vim /etc/ImageMagick/policy.xml

4. Add the following lines to the <policymap> section of the file:

   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="EPHEMERAL" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="URL" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="HTTPS" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="MVG" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="MSL" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="TEXT" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="SHOW" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="WIN" />
   <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PLT" />

5. Save and close the file:

   :wq!

Once these changes have been made, your server will be protected from the ImageMagick vulnerability.