This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
Stay safe from what hackers do with compromised WordPress sites
This is a user generated content for MyStory, a YourStory initiative to enable its community to contribute and have their voices heard. The views and writings here reflect that of the author and not of YourStory.
We often hear about the websites targeted by hackers and spammers. Most of the webmasters assume that if there is no data to steal such as credit card details or bank information, compromising their sites doesn't matter. Unfortunately, they are wrong as hackers can do a lot of things with their WordPress sites.
The major things hackers or spammers can do with your site are described below by Ryan Johnson, a leading expert of Semalt.
Defaced sites and take them offline:
Most often, the hackers or spammers replace your web content and articles with their own. For instance, some of the news websites are attacked, and their political content is replaced with articles related to terrorism. The hackers simply brag that they have attacked your sites and you can do nothing to obscure what they did. Anyone who visits your site will get to know that your site has been hacked. An example of the defaced site is opennet.net. For the hackers who replace your content with propaganda, your website is the place for free advertisement.
Send Spam:
The hackers continue sending spam emails to a large number of people using your information, such as usernames or passwords. Statistica reveals that 54% of all emails sent or received were spam. Another survey report suggests that hackers compromise lots of WordPress sites and use them to send spam emails to plenty of users every day. In most cases, webmasters don't even know that their sites have been hit by hackers. They may also notice that the websites slow down and the spikes in the server have become a common problem. The attackers get two main benefits from this thing: first, they use your server resources free of charge. Secondly, they ruin your reputation online and destroy your site's ranking in search engine results.
Malicious Redirects:
The hackers or spammers are also involved in malicious activities. Redirects are effective for them to funnel the traffic to various malicious and harmful websites. The users don't even know that this is happening to them, and it is common when your advertisements don't show properly. The attackers take advantage of the redirects and send high-quality traffic to their own websites. Their motive is to improve the search engine rankings of their sites and spread malicious content on the internet.
Host Phishing Pages:
The hackers use phishing pages to fool the visitors into providing private or sensitive information. Most often, they impersonate the bank or retailers and try to get us to give them information such as our usernames and passwords. They also steal our credit card details using those phishing pages. The hackers capture lots of information about famous WordPress site, and an example of phishing page is eff.org.
Ransomware:
Ransomware is a malicious program that can block access to your site and demands you to pay a ransom if you want to have access restored. The hackers use ransomware as the mode of earning, and it attacks a lot of websites and blogs. To prevent ransomware attacks, you should have backups of your files. If you have the backup files, you may have to pay the ransom to the hackers as they won't let you use your WordPress site for business purposes.
Regardless of what type of business you are doing and how much traffic your WordPress site gets, the hackers or attackers can easily figure out how to use your web pages for personal reasons.