Emailed Author: There are issues with your plugin code. Please read this ENTIRE email, address all listed issues, and reply to this email with your corrected code attached. It is required for you to read and reply to these emails, and failure to do so will result in significant delays with your plugin being accepted.
## Allowing Direct File Access to plugin files
Direct file access is when someone directly queries your file. This can be done by simply entering the complete path to the file in the URL bar of the browser but can also be done by doing a POST request directly to the file. For files that only contain a PHP class the risk of something funky happening when directly accessed is pretty small. For files that contain procedural code, functions and function calls, the chance of security risks is a lot bigger.
You can avoid this by putting this code at the top of all php files:
if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) exit; // Exit if accessed directly
## Please sanitize, escape, and validate your POST calls
When you include POST/GET/REQUEST calls in your plugin, it's important to sanitize, validate, and escape them. The goal here is to prevent a user from accidentally sending trash data through the system, as well as protecting them from potential security issues.
SANITIZE: All instances where generated content is inserted into the database, or into a file, or being otherwise processed by WordPress, the data MUST be properly sanitized for security. By sanitizing your POST data when used to make action calls or URL redirects, you will lessen the possibility of XSS vulnerabilities. You should never have a raw data inserted into the database, even by a update function, and even with a prepare() call.
VALIDATE: In addition to sanitization, you should validate all your calls. If a $_POST call should only be a number, ensure it's an int() before you pass it through anything. Even if you're sanitizing or using WordPress functions to ensure things are safe, we ask you please validate for sanity's sake. Any time you are adding data to the database, it should be the right data.
ESCAPE: Similarly, when you're outputting data, make sure to escape it properly, so it can't hijack admin screens. There are many esc_*() functions you can use to make sure you don't show people the wrong data.
In all cases, using stripslashes or strip_tags is not enough. You need to use the most appropriate method associated with the type of content you're processing. Check that a URL is a URL and don't just be lazy and use sanitize_text please. The ultimate goal is that you should ensure that invalid and unsafe data is NEVER processed or displayed. Clean everything, check everything, escape everything, and never trust the users to always have input sane data.
Please review this document and update your code accordingly: http://codex.wordpress.org/Validating_Sanitizing_and_Escaping_User_Data
The file data-save-post.php is not sanitizing
## Not using Nonces and/or checking permissions
Please add a nonce to your POST calls to prevent unauthorized access.
Keep in mind, check_admin_referer alone is NOT bulletproof security. Do not rely on nonces for authorization purposes. Use current_user_can() in order to prevent users without the right permissions from accessing things.
https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Nonces
The file data-save-post.php has no nonce
## Including jquery files (or calling them remotely)
Your plugin has included your own copy of a core jQuery file (or called it remotely, probably from Google or jquery.com).
WordPress includes its own version of jquery and many other similar JS files, which have all been rigorously tested with WP and many of the most common plugins. In order to provide the best compatibility and experience for our users, we ask that you not package your own (especially not an older version) and instead use wp_enqueue_script() to pull in WordPress's version.
Please review https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_enqueue_script/ and update your plugin accordingly. You need to both change your code to use our jquery as well as remove the unused files. Remember! Keeping unused files out of your plugins makes them smaller and less potentially vulnerable! if you have any jquery files included in your plugin that WP core has, just delete them.
Offloading jQuery js, css, and other scripts to Google (or jquery.com or anywhere else frankly) is similarly disallowed for the same reasons, but also because you're introducing an unnecessary dependency on another site. If the file you're trying to use isn't a part of WordPress Core, then you should include it -locally- in your plugin, not remotely. Please check first. We have a LOT of JS files :)
If your code doesn't work with the built-in versions of jQuery, it's most likely a no conflict issue.
If you can't guess, we -really- want you to use our JS files, and if you can't, we need to know why so we can fix things for everyone. If you're just including it because you want to support old versions of WP, or because you think they may not have jQuery, please don't. If they don't have the default jQuery, a lot more than your plugin will break. And if they're on older versions of WordPress, they need to upgrade.
We do not recommend you support anything except the most recent version of WP and one release back. After all, we don't.
(Please look in the /launch/templates/template6/js folder
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Please make sure you've addressed ALL issues brought up in this email. When you've corrected your code, reply to this email with the updated code attached as a zip, or provide a link to the new code for us to review. If you have questions, concerns, or need clarification, rplease reply to this email and just ask us.
(While we have tried to make this review as exhaustive as possible we, like you, are humans and may have missed things. As such, we will re-review the ENTIRE plugin when you send it back to us. We appreciate your patience and understanding in this.)