Thousands of WordPress websites get hacked every day, and you don’t even need to be a hacker to accomplish this task. In an internal study done recently, 7 out of 10 people asked were able to find a working WordPress vulnerability and hack within 2 hours; ironically, the non-programmers had a similar success rate as the professional programmers. Apparently Google makes it quite convenient. In the scariest instance, one of the testing subjects was able to join a hacking “community” that gave access to an incredible amount of previously written viruses and vulnerability hacks.
Hacker communities across the globe release data on WordPress vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. Most of today’s hackers aren’t even truly hackers, as they rely on someone else’s malicious script while making slight adjustments for their specific use….they are more code manipulators, than anything else. A basic understand of programming and access to Google are about all that is needed to start hacking; you don’t even need to know how to program, you just need to be able to follow directions closely. It took approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes for one of our non-programmers to find and successfully implement a WordPress hack on a live website
Over 99% percent of websites that were hacked or given a virus, were targeted by a mass attack aimed at thousands or more websites with known vulnerabilities. Very rarely are websites individually targeted, as most individual sites do not contain enough data or value to make it worth hacking. The biggest problem is when a vulnerability becomes known, it is spread across the world very quickly. Very rarely do website owners receive this data, since they are likely more concerned with running their business; they are not likely to be part of the information channels that these vulnerabilities are discussed.
The same thing that makes WordPress so great, also makes it vulnerable to mass-attacks done by “botnets” using virus infected computers.
Over 64 million websites and blogs are using WordPress as the content management system for their sites. This gives plenty of targets for would-be thieves and hackers that prey on the easy targets from the massive amount of current users of WordPress. 99% of the websites fail to do even the minimum suggestions when it comes to protecting their sites. Recently, over 90,000 WordPress websites were hacked by simply targeting the most commonly used logins and passwords. This is in addition to the tens of thousands of new viruses that are released yearly from countries like; China, Russian, Iran and other countries with state-sponsored hackers and “wild-west” type rules on internet usage and hacker tracking. Atwoodz can secure your WordPress website, and we will make sure you have a viable back-up for when an attack does happen. Call us today for a Free Consultation and Security Check!