Wordpress Commenting System User access and Security

Question

In General, WordPress gives these 5 access types to user → Click Here. Namely,

Subscriber Contributor Author Editor Administrator

I have a main website to be launched here, and then the blog here. the Main website and the blogs are installed through the multisite installation that means they share the same database. what I want to achieve is this that the user should be able to comment only once he has signed it and is logged in. How does comment system in WordPress operate if I want the user to be logged in before submitting a comment?

What am I afraid is wouldn't it create a security breach? or WP has a high level of security and provide some controlled user access and restrict commenters to gain access to other site areas?

Please advise me If this is not a suitable post so that I can delete it. Please do not devote me.

I am putting some more though on it.

Would it be possible to give commentator login form a Subscriber/Contributor access? If yes, would that be secured keeping in mind that the main website will have saleable products and financial data and details of the customer that falls into the category of the sensitive data?

In the meanwhile, I was reading many blogs and came to realize that "contributor" has three access → read, edit and delete a post. I this access limited to his own post or any post from other authors?

Can we transfer by default the contributor access to the comment form?Does WP comment hooks allow that?

Summary of My question: What secured access should we give to the comment Poster so that he doesn't have any other access such as post creation, page creation etc and he should be able to edit, delete and create only his won comments.

Answer 1

From a security point of view, it is always better not to have users you do not manually approve, as writing correct code that tests against a specific privilege is generally harder than a code that has a binary state of logged-in/not logged-in.

Core has its privilege escalation bugs from time to time, but plugin and theme writers too many times do not fully grasp the concept of privileges which results in coding mistakes which may lead to privilege escalation.

That said, a subscribe role should be fairly safe, it can still access the admin, but I am sure there are plugins to prevent it, but can't do much except for changing his profile related settings.

To sum it up, it is not a good idea to have users on a shop site just because you want (I assume) some anti-spam measure in your blog. Either let comments be "free" for all, or don't use a multisite, but a separate wordpress installs.