Almost every business has a website. It is a powerful tool to showcase their products, services, and values to potential customers. A website can also help a business to generate leads, increase sales, and build trust. WordPress is immensely popular website builder and is used by millions of people all over the world. It powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet. It also holds 64.2% of CMS market share. No other website builder software comes close. WordPress powers websites for big name brands including Disney, Sony, Facebook, and more. However, this also makes WordPress a common target for hackers who exploit vulnerabilities in WordPress plugins and themes.
One of the recent examples of WordPress hacking is the Balada campaign, which compromised thousands of WordPress sites by exploiting a flaw in the tagDiv Composer plugin. This plugin is required for two popular themes: Newspaper and Newsmag1. The hackers used the vulnerability to inject scripts that redirected visitors to various scam sites, such as fake tech support, lottery wins, and push notification scams23. The hackers also tried to gain persistent control over the infected sites by creating fake admin accounts, uploading backdoors, and adding malicious plugins.
There are different reasons why hackers hack WordPress sites. Some are just practicing their skills on weak sites. Others have more harmful goals, such as spreading malware, launching attacks on other sites, or sending spam.
To protect your WordPress site from hacking, you need to understand the common causes of WordPress hacks and how to prevent them:
Update WordPress, Plugins, and Themes
One of the main causes of WordPress hacking is using outdated versions of WordPress, plugins, and themes. These versions may have security flaws and bugs that hackers can exploit. Therefore, you should always update your WordPress core, plugins, and themes to the latest versions available.
Updating WordPress is easy and can be done from your dashboard. You can also enable automatic updates for WordPress core and plugins4. However, before updating anything, make sure you have a backup of your site in case something goes wrong.
Use Strong Passwords and Change Admin Username On WordPress
Another common cause of WordPress hacking is using weak passwords and default usernames for your WordPress accounts. Hackers can use brute force attacks to guess your login credentials and access your site. To prevent this, you should use strong, unique passwords for each account on your site. You can use a password manager tool to generate and store your passwords securely.
You should also change your admin username from the default ‘admin’ to something more difficult to guess. You can do this by creating a new user with administrator privileges and deleting the old one.
Password-Protect Your Admin Area and Use Two-Factor Authentication
The admin area of your WordPress site is where you can perform various actions on your site. It is also the most attacked area of your site by hackers. You can add an extra layer of security by password-protecting your admin area using .htaccess. This will require you to enter an additional password before accessing the WordPress login page.
You can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to make it even harder for hackers to log in to your site. 2FA adds a second step to the login process, such as entering a code sent to your phone or email. You can use a plugin like Google Authenticator or Authy to enable 2FA on your site.
Use SFTP or SSH Instead of FTP
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method of transferring files between your computer and your web server. However, FTP is not secure because it sends your password in plain text over the internet. Hackers can intercept this password and use it to access your site.
Instead of FTP, you should use SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) or SSH (Secure Shell). These methods encrypt your password and data during transmission, making it harder for hackers to steal them. You can use any FTP client that supports SFTP or SSH, such as FileZilla or WinSCP.
Change File Permissions and Database Prefix
File permissions are rules that control who can access and modify files on your web server. Incorrect file permissions can allow hackers to write and change files on your site. You should make sure that all files on your site have 644 as file permission and all folders have 755 as file permission.
Database prefix is a string that is added before the names of the tables in your WordPress database. By default, WordPress uses wp_ as database prefix. This makes it easier for hackers to guess your table names and access them.
You should change your database prefix to something more complex and random. This will make it harder for hackers to find and attack your database.
Use a Security Plugin or Service
One of the best ways to protect your WordPress site from hacking is to use a security plugin or service that can scan your site for malware, block malicious requests, and monitor suspicious activity. There are many security plugins and services available for WordPress, but one of the best ones is Sucuri.
Sucuri is a website security platform that offers malware detection and removal, website firewall, DDoS protection, SSL certificates, and more. Sucuri can protect your site from various threats such as brute force attacks, SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), phishing, spamming, and more.
