Are You Vulnerable in 2022’s WordPress Security?
Updated on July 5, 2022, by Andy Thompson | Reviewed for Accuracy
Affiliate information: To be completely transparent, some of the links on our website are affiliate links. If you use one of these links to make a purchase, we will get a commission at absolutely no extra cost to you.

WordPress: Is it safe? Do you pose this question to yourself on a regular basis?

In the core of WordPress, there are no weaknesses. WordPress is created and maintained by some of the most devoted and effective engineers in the world.

There is no way to isolate the WordPress platform. There is a username, a password, a theme, and a plugin accessible. The CMS may be compromised if this happens.

We have been protecting WordPress websites from hackers for the past ten years. MalCare shields more than 250,000 websites from dangerous hacker attacks each day.

No theme, plugin, or user credentials by themselves render WordPress susceptible. Problems arise from obsolete themes and shoddy credentials.

These issues will be covered in this article:

The most prevalent vulnerabilities and hacks
You should take the following actions to defend your website from them.
Your website will be shielded from WordPress security problems by our security plugin. Your site will be protected by a firewall, and daily scans will be performed. It will also make it easier to add a number of hardening techniques without causing your website to malfunction.

Summary of Contents
WordPress Security Issues And Vulnerabilities: The 12 Most Common Issues

1. Plugins and themes that are incompatible
   WordPress Plugins & Themes Offline
2. Insecure WordPress login environment; 4. Unsecure hosting environment
3. SQL Injection 2. Pharma Hack 3. Japanese Keyword Hack 4. Cross-Site Scripting Attack 5. Wrong User Roles Practices in WordPress
   Five. Phishing
4. Escalation of Privilege
5. The WP-VCD.php Bug
   How Can WordPress Security Issues Be Fixed?
   What Follows After a Website Is Hacked?
   WordPress Security Issues And Vulnerabilities: The 12 Most Common Issues
   WordPress security issues may be divided into the following groups:

The most typical WordPress security holes
Hacks prevalent in WordPress
Website vulnerabilities are exploited by hackers in order to compromise your website. The likelihood of an assault on hackers decreased by correcting vulnerabilities. These 5 significant vulnerabilities might affect your website.

The most frequent WordPress vulnerabilities are: 1. Incompatible plugins and themes
Credits for the WordPress Security Image: Pexels

Since over ten years ago, we have focused on WordPress security. We are aware that many of these hacks are the result of outdated themes and plugins because of our expertise dealing with millions of compromised websites.

Just like any other program, WordPress themes and plugins may become vulnerable. The issue is promptly fixed by developers who release a patch. A website owner who puts off updating his or her site exposes it to hacking.

Think about Contact Form 7, one of the top three form plugins on the planet. Your website created a vulnerability that allowed hackers to access it. Although a fix was made available fairly quickly, several sites nevertheless experienced a breach because they disregarded or postponed the update. After we cleaned everything up, we returned the site to its pre-cleaned state.

WordPress Plugins & Themes Offline
Credits for the Nulled WordPress image: Pexels

It is highly tempting to utilize defunct themes and plugins. After all, you may use the premium features without paying. These themes and plugins, however, are not free.

Contrary to what you might believe, nulled themes and plugins are not made available to you for assistance. It has a pretty self-serving motivation.
Backdoors are present in pirated plugins and themes. When you install it, you unintentionally open a door for hackers to enter your website.

Your site is still at risk as long as the pirated theme or plugin is still present. It is always getting hacked again.
Furthermore, the creators of pirated plugins and themes don’t provide updates. The outcome is that your website is now exposed.
The usage of pirated WordPress themes and plugins has led to hundreds of wp-feed.php infestations.

3. Insufficient Security for WordPress Login WordPress Login Image Credits: Pexels

Your login page is a frequent target since it gives hackers access to your WordPress website.
In a matter of minutes, a hacker may use bots to test hundreds of username and password combinations in an effort to figure out your login information. This is a “brute force” attack.

It goes without saying that weak passwords like admin, user, password123, and p@ssw0rd are simple to guess.

Even if brute force is unsuccessful, hundreds of login attempts on your website will slow down your server. WP-config.php preloads the entire website upon loading the WordPress login page.

There will undoubtedly be a slowdown as a result. A 503 error could appear if the system is overloaded.

4. Unfavorable Hosting Conditions Image Credits: Pexels

Poor hosting services might also make your website insecure. A hosting company is like the legs of a chair. On it, people sit. Imagine how uncomfortable it would be if termites were to infest your leg. Under this strain, a chair crumbles.

Your website’s hosting is also essential to its stability. If the hosting is compromised, you won’t be able to keep your website updated.
Poor hosting conditions are especially prevalent with obscure hosting businesses. If you don’t pick the finest hosting business, your website may be vulnerable to hacking or crash.

In any event, even if you pick a well-known hosting company, your website may still be exposed. Security concerns with hosts’ services are common. If one website is compromised in a shared environment, the effects will spread to the other websites.

5. Inappropriate user role practices in WordPress
   incorrect reading techniques
   Images courtesy of Pexels

WordPress user roles come in six different varieties. The following permissions are given for each role:

Administrator\sEditor\sAuthor\sContributor\sSubscriber
The most powerful among them, administrators have full access to the website. It is impossible for anyone to possess this kind of power. On many websites, all visitors are also administrators.

If one person decides to abuse the authority given to them, they may wreck havoc on your website. They may even set up a backdoor and ghost admins on your website if you ever erase their accounts.

Or, they can profit quickly and covertly by utilizing your site and data. Hackers have been known to drain the store’s funds by changing the bank account linked to the WooCommerce payment gateway.

If any of the users use shoddy credentials, you might potentially lose complete control of your website.

Here is a list of the top five WordPress security vulnerabilities.

These flaws make it possible to attack a WordPress website in several ways. We will talk about some typical ones in the section after this.

You Should Know About These 7 WordPress Hacks: 1. SQL Injection
WordPress hacks often start with an exploitable vulnerability on your website. Input fields from form plugins are used by hackers to initiate SQL injection attacks. Malicious PHP scripts will be injected into your site’s database to steal information or get access to your site.

2. Image Credits for Pharma Hack: Pexels

The same flaws, such as those in plugins, themes, or weak credentials, may be used to carry out drug hacks.

Hackers may install viruses like the favicon.ico malware after infecting your ranking pages with spamming keywords and pop-up advertising. It aims to rank the prescription medications offered on your website according to its SEO qualities. To lead people to their businesses, where they can sell the items, they utilize pop advertising.

This kind of hacking is sometimes referred to as an SEO spam assault.

3. Hacking Japanese Keywords
   Images of Japan credited to Pexels

Japanese keyword hacks are pretty similar to pharma hacks. By taking advantage of weak plugins and themes, a website might be compromised. Then, your pages have affiliate links and spammy Japanese language put into them.

You’ll begin drawing in people who want to click on those dubious affiliate links and purchase the goods the hackers are selling once your website starts to rank for Japanese.

4. Attack using Cross-Site Scripting
   Exploiting a flaw in a plugin or theme to conduct a hack is known as a cross-site scripting attack.
   Consider a comment plugin that is weak and enables harmful URLs to be posted in the comments. Anyone who clicks on the link will have access to their cookies. Hackers get access to your website by stealing the user’s browser cookie.
   You should be wary of hacking attempts like session hijacking and cookie stealing!

Five. Phishing
Phishing attacks are used by hackers to enter websites by taking advantage of flaws (like outdated plugins or themes or weak credentials).
Then, using the tools on your website, hackers will send spam emails to your customers. People are tricked into clicking the link using a fake website, such an online banking site.

When users divulge private information, such credit card numbers, hackers can take it.

6. Escalation of Privilege Image Credits: Pexels

By guessing your user credentials, an attacker employs brute force to get access to your website. Could they take over a Subscriber or Contributor with limited rights?

They couldn’t accomplish anything with that type of account. There must be an administrator account. When that occurs, they raise the level of privileges.

Hackers use plugin vulnerabilities to take complete control of the website.

7. The WP-VCD.php Bug
   Hackers can get access to your website and take over by taking advantage of pirated or outdated WordPress themes and plugins.
   Sites like yours are used to store illicit content, including TV episodes, movies, and software that has been cracked. As a result of the resource hogging, your website becomes incredibly sluggish. When hosting companies see that some websites are consuming too much resources, they may even suspend them.

The most typical WordPress exploits are now over. If you don’t implement the following security measures, one of these assaults is probably going to happen to your website.

How Can WordPress Security Issues Be Fixed?
We discussed the many kinds of attacks that WordPress websites may encounter as well as typical weaknesses that WordPress websites endure.
Here are some steps for patching. Hackers are far less likely to succeed by doing this.

Install a security plugin for WordPress.
There are several solutions available on the security plugin market, but not all of them work well. Many people talk a lot yet are unable to achieve what they promise.

MalCare doesn’t offer BS for sale. The plugin offers the website powerful security controls that really deter hackers from breaking into the system.

You may use this application to plug any security gaps in your system.

With the plugin, maintaining your website is simple.
When malware is discovered on your website, an alert will be sent to you.
You’ll be able to adopt the site security precautions that WordPress advises.
The firewall will also segregate malicious communications from certain nations and devices. Before hackers or bots can access your website, access is prevented.

2. Continue to Update Your Website
   It’s important to update your security. We must emphasize this. We noted in the previous section that outdated plugins and themes are to blame for the majority of hack assaults. When the website is not updated as quickly as feasible, this happens. Websites with this flaw are susceptible to hacking.

Learn how to safeguard your WordPress website. Follow this advice to make sure that upgrades to your WordPress site don’t break it.

3. Abandon Pirated Plugins and Themes
   Pirated plugins and themes are used to spread backdoors. Unknowing access to websites is possible.
   Some of these websites offer support and resource sharing. Themes and plugins may be posted illegally. Because WordPress does not check uploaded plugins and themes for malware, hackers can take advantage of this.

You must avoid utilizing pirated plugins or themes.

They won’t be updated, even if you receive a pirated theme or plugin from a reliable buddy. Updating your website regularly is crucial.

4. Use login security precautions
   Hackers frequently target your login page with brute force assaults. There are several techniques to safeguard the page. Here they are:
   Keep track of any usernames or passwords you use on your website, and enforce secure logins. Both usernames and passwords must be distinct.
   To reduce the number of failed login attempts by users, you might wish to deploy a CAPTCHA protection system. If you are using a security plugin like MalCare, CAPTCHA protection can be turned on automatically.

Start using two-factor authentication.

A code provided to your registered phone number must be entered before you can access your WordPress admin panel.
Services like Facebook and Gmail employ two-factor authentication to make sure the right user is signing in.

5. Create appropriate user roles
   No user should have admin privileges. Only a small group of individuals should be trusted with someone with such power.
   Consider the rights that each user of your site needs in order to do daily tasks.
   Users of WordPress can do the following things:

The website’s administrator is in charge of everything and has access to all functions.
Posts can be controlled and published by the editor.
Authors are only permitted to edit their own posts.
Contributor posts can be planned and authored, but they cannot be published.
Subscriber – All they can do is manage their profile.
Make wise choices while choosing roles.
All of these weaknesses are addressed with this. The likelihood of a hack is significantly decreased by the aforementioned steps. For total security, a site’s security must be toughened.

Effects of Website Hacking
If your website gets hacked, horrible consequences could result. WordPress website hacks can result in a number of issues, such as:

Hackers are using your website as a redirect to such harmful sites. As a result, bounce rates quickly increase and visitors spend less time on the page.
Pop-up advertisements on your pages or unlawful files kept on the server cause websites to load slowly.
We do not accept slow-loading websites. The visitors will instantly click the back button. Search engines will see that users leave your website rather soon and will interpret this as a sign that your website is unreliable and does not live up to visitor expectations. Search engines will no longer rank your website.
A new SEO strategy is a waste of time, money, and effort.
When Google and your hosting company find out that your website has been hijacked, they could give visitors false warnings, blacklist your website, and suspend your account.
The cost of repairing hacked websites is high.

In the core of WordPress, there are no weaknesses. WordPress is created and maintained by some of the most devoted and effective engineers in the world.

There is no way to isolate the WordPress platform. There is a username, a password, a theme, and a plugin accessible. The CMS may be compromised if this happens.

We have been protecting WordPress websites from hackers for the past ten years. MalCare shields more than 250,000 websites from dangerous hacker attacks each day.

No theme, plugin, or user credentials by themselves render WordPress susceptible. Problems arise from obsolete themes and shoddy credentials.

These issues will be covered in this article:

The most prevalent vulnerabilities and hacks
You should take the following actions to defend your website from them.
Your website will be shielded from WordPress security problems by our security plugin. Your site will be protected by a firewall, and daily scans will be performed. It will also make it easier to add a number of hardening techniques without causing your website to malfunction.

WordPress Security Issues And Vulnerabilities: The 12 Most Common Issues
WordPress security issues may be divided into the following groups:

The most typical WordPress security holes
Hacks prevalent in WordPress
Website vulnerabilities are exploited by hackers in order to compromise your website. The likelihood of an assault on hackers decreased by correcting vulnerabilities. These 5 significant vulnerabilities might affect your website.

WordPress Vulnerabilities Most Common