Due to advancements in technology and numerous industries shifting their operations online, data on the interest is becoming more explicit. Top notch security measures have become an essential requirement to safeguard sensitive information from being breached.
Taking necessary safety measures is even more important for companies and individuals operating a WordPress website that requires users’ input. As this input can be some personal or confidential information, protection against any potential threats is mandatory for the safety of the users. WordPress, like any other software on the internet, comes with its own set of vulnerabilities that website owners need to be cautious about.
Taking this into consideration, in this article, we’ll be shedding some light on common WordPress security vulnerabilities that everyone should be familiar with.
8 WordPress Security Vulnerabilities You Should Know
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Outdated Themes
One of the major reasons why developers prefer WordPress is because it can be customized easily. These customizations are done through themes, plugins, and add-ons. However, these extensions must be used with proper precautions. If you use outdated themes and plugins, it becomes extremely easy to break through the security of your website.
Outdated plugins and software can cause your website to slow down, resulting in the need to invest and further prioritize your WordPress performance optimization. And so, optimizing the performance of your WordPress website can be done through regularly updating your website, themes, and plugins.
Simply put, monitor your website for new updates. These updates can be downloaded manually or automatically installed whenever available.
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Malicious Software
Hackers can insert files in a website, or plant codes in the existing files to steal the user’s data through malicious software. Hackers then collect crucial information using malware files, making WordPress prone to the same.
Usually, malware enters the WordPress sites through unauthorized logins and themes. The security problems in these plugins are what hackers take advantage of. To place malware on your WordPress website, hackers may create new add-ons or imitate existing ones.
To prevent your WordPress site from being affected by malware, you should always carefully check every new plugin or theme that you install. Another way to prevent this risk is by thoroughly examining the image, video, or any other file that you want to upload on the website.
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SEO Spam
Search engine optimization is also a common aspect that falls under WordPress vulnerabilities which can likely be exploited. Websites that appear on the first page of Google’s search results are majorly targeted and spammed with false keywords and pop-up ads to sell phony goods. This means that they take advantage of your hard work to sell their counterfeit products.
Unlike malware, these spams are difficult to detect, which makes them more harmful. Therefore, to prevent SEO spam, you can run safety checks on WordPress using security plugins. You should ensure that your website is being updated regularly to prevent the above.
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Cross-site Scripting
Cross-site scripting takes place when an attacker tricks the victim into loading websites that contain specific codes. Once these malicious scripts are loaded, they can read the information that they are otherwise restricted to. For example, this attack can be used to gather user data that is entered into a form.
People generally blame WordPress themes along with plugins as well for such attacks. If the plugins are outdated or poorly maintained, it becomes easier for hackers to exploit them and implement such attacks.
Inspecting the traffic on your WordPress website is crucial to avoid such risks. To implement this, you need to hire a wordpress developer to enable your website that can prevent unauthorized people from visiting and interacting with it.
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Hotlinking
Hotlinking is embedding someone else’s content in your website without permission. Here, a website will embed the content from your website, such as images, videos, or files, instead of downloading it themselves. The advantage of this is that you spend money to maintain your website and third-party people benefit from it.
Hotlinking is more of a bad practice than a scam. It may also be illegal in cases when the content is licensed and restricted to individual use. To protect your content against such practices, you can use watermarks or a copyright logo.
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SQL Injection
Websites usually integrate SQL for the primary purpose of storing data and making it accessible with minimum effort. Through SQL injections, hackers can gain the ability to modify and access your database. This can be used to add unapproved links, edit or delete your data.
Therefore, you should be careful of user input, especially when it contains confidential information, or form submissions. To improve the security of your website, even more, you can enforceCaptcha as the last step before users can submit any information via forms.
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Phishing
Phishing involves hackers taking advantage of a loophole and exploiting your website through an outdated add-on or weak website credentials. Your website’s data is then misused to send spam emails to your consumers, viewers, and customers. The purpose of these emails is to redirect traffic to a link. This link could be a hoax site and can be used for some kind of banking or credit card fraud.
To prevent your website from a phishing scam, make sure your admin, visitor, subscriber and other permissions are rightfully set. Moderate comments under your web pages since hackers can leave comments containing spam links to trick users.
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(SQL) Injections
SQL is a programming language that is used to quickly access stored data on a specific site. It’s the preferred language on WordPress for database management and, while rather secure, malicious parties can use it to take advantage of your site.
WordPress sites are vulnerable to this kind of attack because most are designed to foster a sense of community. Attackers most often use SQL injections through visitor facing submission forms, like contact forms, payment info fields, and lead forms.
The best course of action is to be skeptical of user input. Any form submission on your site is an opportunity for visitors with malicious intent to submit information directly into your SQL database.
Restrict the submission of special characters in visitor submissions. Restrict the submission of special characters in visitor submissions. Without symbols, you reduce a string of malicious code into harmless gibberish. Consider using a WordPress form plugin and/or a WordPress security plugin to do this work for you. You can also use a captcha as a final step in the submission process to prevent bots from making injection attempts.
Bottom Line
Your WordPress website has several vulnerabilities like outdated themes, SQL injections, and SEO spam, which make it prone to various risks. In order to overcome such vulnerabilities and threats, it’s best to keep your websites updated at all times. We have discussed a few major WordPress security vulnerabilities that you should be familiar with to safeguard your websites from the same.
