Common WordPress Security Issues Every Site Owner Must Know

There are tons of WordPress plugins available in the market, but we should keep in mind that all of them aren’t safe. Weak coding on a plugin or the WordPress plugins with security flaws allows hackers to gain unauthorized access inject malicious code, and contribute to data theft.

How It’s Exploited: How It’s Exploited: When we say you should use trusted plugins, we mean it. Online hackers target websites using vulnerable WordPress plugins. They get unauthorized access and exploit your system before you can apply any security patches.

This is a type of zero-day exploit that is used against the developer before they provide any fix for the problem.

Comprehensive Solutions:

• Don’t install plugins without checking: If you are installing any plugin on your website, always install the plugin directly from the WordPress Store or from the official website.
• Regular Security Updates Immediately: You should not ignore security patches because they are crucial in preventing all the latest security vulnerabilities.
• Delete Unused Plugins: If you are not using a plugin, it’s best to
• Use a Security Plugin: It’s always useful to use a WordPress security plugin. If you wish to use a plugin that is reliable and doesn’t affect your pocket, you can easily use Iron Security by WPIron. This plugin is free and can help you with a web application firewall that can block exploitation attempts in various ways.

Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is one of the well-known WordPress security vulnerabilities. These types of attacks are utilized by hackers to inject malicious scripts into the webpage of your website. These malicious scripts can break your security and take all sensitive user information.

How It’s Exploited: If you are using outdated plugins and themes, you may be at risk of security breaches. XSS vulnerabilities. Internet attackers target the poorly written codes in the input field and execute these malicious scripts.

Complete Protection Strategy:

• Input Validation & Sanitization: If you want to stay protected, you should use WordPress functions in order to sanitize all user input.
• Implement Security Headers: If you haven’t used the Content-Security-Policy (CSP) header, it’s the right time to use it because it helps in preventing XSS vulnerabilities at the browser level.
• Keep Everything Updated: Almost all the plugins and themes we used get updated with security patches to stay protected from XSS vulnerabilities. So, it’s the best option to stay updated with your themes and plugins.

Pro Tip: Configuring CSP headers is complex. A plugin like Iron Security simplifies deploying crucial HTTP Security Headers, including a strong Content-Security-Policy, with just a few clicks, directly mitigating these security problems.

Many people overlook the importance of updating their software, themes, and plugins. This may be something that could get unnoticed easily, but always update your core software, themes, and plugins. Hackers always target outdated plugins with a goal to gain unauthorized access to your website. Although good companies provide timely updates, users sometimes ignore updating their software. This ultimately results in an open door from unpatched security issues.

Impact: So, if you are careless about updating outdated components. However, these compenents can trigger unpatched security issues for XSS vulnerabilities, SQL injection attacks, and more, making your site an easy target.

Comprehensive Update Strategy:

Enable Automatic Updates: If you want to secure your website, enabling automatic updates is the first security measure.

Here is a code you can use:

// Enable all automatic updates in wp-config.php
define( 'WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE', true );
add_filter( 'auto_update_plugin', '__return_true' );
add_filter( 'auto_update_theme', '__return_true' );

Regular Audit: If there are any themes or plugins you don’t use anymore, you should remove those abandoned plugins and themes.

Test on Staging: It’s a safe approach to use the staging site to verify if the security updates work perfectly.

Pro Tip: Iron Security is a free plugin that helps to enhance your website’s security. enable automatic updates. This feature helps you with WordPress core software and plugins. This ensures that you are up-to-date with the latest security patches.

Brute force attacks are widely used as cyberattacks. This simply involves cybercriminals trying out different username and password combinations to exploit weak login credentials. Hackers can automate this process and try out thousands of combinations.

How it’s Exploited: Cybercriminals usually carry out this attack on wp-login.php. In this process they automate the system to try out thousands of login attempts per second, with the aim of figuring out the right username and password.

Multi-Layer Defense Strategy:

• Use Strong and Unique Passwords: In this rapidly evolving technology, you should use unique passwords with strong combinations that can be difficult to predict. You can always use a password manager to generate strong passwords and safely store them.
• Limit Login Attempts: In your WordPress website, you can set a limit for the login attempts to prevent brute force attacks. This is one of the core security measures every website owner should follow.
• Implement Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Two-factor authentication lets you send a secret code to your phone number or email. This is an important and critical second layer of security.
• Change Login URL: You can change the default WordPress login URL “example.com/wp-login/” to something unique and difficult to guess for the attackers.

Pro Tip: Here is a quick tip for you. You can use Iron Security. This free security plugin has features like a custom admin area URL, limit login attempts & lockout user from authentications, limit the number of administrators, session timeout for idle users, change default admin ID, and block user enumeration.

A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack sends your website an unusual amount of traffic. Attackers use XML-RPC to perform DDoS attacks. XML-RPC (XML Remote Procedure Call) is a protocol that enables two or more computers to communicate over a network using HTTP and XML to send and receive data. If used with the wrong intention, it can be used for exploiting WordPress security.

Solutions:

• Disable XML-RPC: If you are not utilizing XML-RPC, it’s always recommended to disable it.
• Use a DDoS Mitigation Service: DDoS Mitigation Service is a useful feature that will protect your website against all the traffic-based attacks.
• Choose a Secure Host: It is mandatory to use a secure hosting provider. A secure hosting environment is the foundation for making your WordPress website safe for users.

Pro Tip: Iron Security Let’s let the site owner switch the XML-RPC off easily. This helps you to improve your site’s security.