Hackers are capable of anything when talking about the safety of websites online especially wordpress sites.
Part of the challenges of having websites online like wordpress site is due to the activities of hackers.
Hackers are capable of so many terrible things on the internet.
Like the pirates in the sea, highway robbers etc., the aim of hackers is always to compromise information in online resources.
Hackers
Hackers are people who are always out to find and exploit weaknesses on computers or computer networks.
There are different reason why hacking is often done, its either to make profit, challenge the expertise of someone, enjoy it as a game or even protecting something they feel is not pleasant to them.
There are two major types of hacking, ethical and unethical hacking.
Ethical Hacking
This involves hacking activity that is legal and permissive. For instance, if an operating system password can no longer be remembered yet the owner of the computer wants the password removed. If someone breaks into the computer with his or her permission to help out, it is referred to as ethical hacking.
Ethical hackers normally require permission and authority to hack most times, they are commissioned or paid to carry out the hacking.
Unethical Hacking
Hackers under this category carry out illegal hacking without permission. Most times they do it to earn profit for themselves.
Some of the hackers look at it as a game or a challenge with which they must win.
Hackers do not respect the size of organization they intend to hack. Big companies like Sony, Chick-fil-A, Anthem, Premera Blue Cross, U.S. Postal Service, MCX, Staples have all been hacked recently.
Hackers also do not respect the technology or platform that was used to build the website only that some platforms are a bit easier for them to break through than others.
WordPress
WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) which has gained acceptance in recent years and has been able to power millions of websites from small to mighty companies across the globe.
At least report has it that wordpress powers not less than 22 percent of the entire website on the world wide web.
It may interest you reading article to know if you haven’t before now that great companies sites like CNN, Forbes, Times Inc., ebay, MTV News Room, TechCrunch, The New Yorker, BBC America, The Official Star Wars Blog, Facebook News Room etc are created with wordpress.
However, like every other technology, wordpress sites are invaded by hackers periodically.
Report has it that at least 76% of wordpress sites are vulnerable to hacking . Therefore there is the need to look for a way out of this problem.
Talkinfotech.com has researched into providing tips on how to prevent such unethical hacking of websites especially sites designed on wordpress platform.
Hackers can affect wordpress sites in the following ways:
Hackers can replace your affiliate links
Hackers can steal your traffic or redirect them to someone else
Hackers can pilfer your personal data or those of your site visitors like credit cards, passwords, and so on by infecting the computers with malwares or inserting phishing pages to steal their data.
Hackers will attack even if your website does not have much traffic. Because for hackers everything website is a huge resource.
Hackers do all these by publishing malicious scripts.
But hey! Don’t worry in this article, I will show you how to protect your website from such attacks and make the hackers scripts quit and go to easier targets.
Steps:
#1. Do not use “Admin” as your user name
By default the username of a wordpress website is “Admin”. This explains why there are several hacking scripts built to hack wordpress sites through the username “Admin”.
If your website’s username is “Admin” , go to the Dash Board, Users and create a new user with administrator privilege.
Delete Admin username while doing that, select the option “Attribute all contents to:” the new username you just created.
#2. Limit Login Attempts.
By default wordpress allow users many attempted to login, that is bad for you but good for hackers as they take advantage of a few attempts feedbacks to hack your site.
To limit the login attempts, go to your Dash Board , Add New Plugins then search for wp limit login attempts.
Install and activate it, go to settings, Wp limit Plugin to set how many attempts you can allow.
#3. Keep your website up to date
Periodically, wordpress themes, plugins and related facilities are updated to address rising security and other challenges.
Non-updated wordpress sites are vulnerable to threats from hackers.
It is therefore advisable to update your website regularly. But remember to back-up your site before updating .
#4. Delete the Readme.html file
The ReadMe.html file is located at the WordPress directory that gives information about wordpress version, PHP version, MYSQL version and other information that they need to hack your site.
So, just go to your website root directory and delete the ReadMe.html file.
#5. Backup-up your website regularly.
Backing up your website regularly ensures that in the event of sudden failure from any angle, you can have a current back up copy to restore quickly.
You can install Duplicator plugin which makes it easy to move your website back up copy to anywhere you want and restore them easily as you like.
Show us some love if this article was helpful to you by liking, sharing and following us on our social media platforms below.