Most of the online users were afraid of using the WordPress CMS because of Vulnerability Issues. But if a vulnerability or a loophole is identified then the perfect solution with the patch is provided by the developers. Here I have taken the list of common WordPress Vulnerabilities and it’s solutions.
WordPress Vulnerabilities & its Solutions
I have prepared a common WordPress attack along with the solution and listed them below. Have a clear read about it and make sure your site is not exposed to such attacks.
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Outdated Themes & Plugins
Using the free theme or paid theme is not a problem at any case. But most of them were not updating their security plugins & themes properly. Normally, we may have some thoughts like whether is it necessary to update the themes regularly? and the answer is of course yes. You can read more about this on my previous article “Why Should I Update WordPress Theme regularly?“.
Outdated themes & plugins will act as a pathway for the attackers. The latest updates on themes & plugins will help you to save yourself from possible loopholes which are left uncontrolled on the previous edition. To avoid these kinds of attack, you want to make sure all your theme and plugins are up to date. Also, try to avoid using the plugins and themes which is left alone without any recent updates. As per the complete analysis, it is recommended to use the plugins & themes updated at least within last 3 months.
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Brute Force Attack
Brute Force Attack is a well-known attack over the web. It is not a tactic and they are simple guesses. A person or a human will not work on the Brute Force Attack as it is the time-consuming process. Normally, there are bots which are coded to function in such a way to try all the possible combinations. To make it very clear, if you are using a password only with the characters “a” & “b”, then the maximum combination will be 4 (a, b, ab, ba). In this way, the bots will try to identify the passwords. It is not only applicable to the websites but also for all the online mediums.
To avoid these kinds of attack, you want to make sure the security plugins were installed & configured properly. Also, you can enable two-step verification for administrator login which gives you better security than anything.
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SQL Injection Attack
SQL Injection attack requires a vulnerable entry point. These attacks directly affect your database files which are not easy to recover. SQL injection can affect any site and on the year 2009, NASA Sites got hacked via this attack. Anyhow WordPress team makes it so easy to prevent the sites from SQL Injection attacks. These days, WordPress API’s provide various functions to protect the input data from SQL Injection Attacks.
To prevent these attacks you want to turn to the WordPress Database Access Abstraction Object(wpdb). Below is an example that how it works:
$wpdb->get_var( $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT something FROM table WHERE foo = %s and status = %d", $name, // an unescaped string (function will do the sanitization for you) $status // an untrusted integer (function will do the sanitization for you) ) );
This is just a piece of security made by WordPress and there are plenty more functions added to make the websites safe.
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Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Cross-site request forgery tricks the user to perform some action as per the attacker’s code. The simple way to understand this attack is “How clicking a button/link works”. These attacks perform with any of the two codes like GET or POST commands. Initially, a request will be sent for a page and later it will be sent to the server. Cross-Site Request Forgery is when it happens without the knowledge of the user.
Solution to stop Cross-Site Request Forgery attack is by using the “nonces”. It is used to verify a user intends to perform an action. An example is a WordPress site in which authorized users are allowed to upload videos. As an authorized user uploading videos is an intentional action and permitted. It is one of the common vulnerabilities mentioned on WordPress Developers Blog.