Etherpad is often publicly reachable for collaborative editing, which makes abuse control and plugin hygiene critical. Harden settings in settings.json, enforce auth boundaries, and reduce plugin attack surface.
¶ 1) Harden settings.json auth and session controls
- Configure
users and requireAuthentication for private deployments.
- Enable
requireAuthorization where only approved users should access pads.
- Set a strong
sessionKey and rotate it during incident response.
- Keep
trustProxy enabled only when running behind a trusted proxy chain.
¶ 2) Secure transport and public exposure
- Serve Etherpad behind HTTPS with HSTS.
- Apply reverse-proxy rate limits for pad creation and login endpoints.
- Restrict admin/API paths to trusted subnets.
- Disable open signup behavior in internal environments.
¶ 3) Manage plugins and operational risk
- Install only required plugins from trusted maintainers.
- Review plugin permissions and update behavior before production rollout.
- Keep Etherpad and Node.js runtime patched.
- Back up pad database and validate restore procedures.
- Etherpad settings documentation: https://docs.etherpad.org/
- Etherpad source repository: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite
- Etherpad security policy: https://github.com/ether/etherpad-lite/security/policy
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