Why Would They Hack **MY** Website?

Those who did not attend our September virtual meetup missed out on some “fun” — one of the attendees asked why he couldn’t access his WordPress admin area, and as it turned out, the site had been hacked and required a cleanup.

This experience led directly to this month’s topic — how websites get hacked (and why), and how to go about diagnosing the issue and removing any harmful files, scripts, and database rows.

Join us as we watch a recent webinar put on by the good folks at Wordfence, entitled “The Hacker Motive: What Attackers Are Doing with Your Hacked Site.” After the video we can discuss its content and any questions that arose.

Here is the official description from Wordfence, along with the link to the webinar in the event you cannot make the meetup but still want to learn about this very important topic.

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URL: https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2020/09/the-hacker-motive-what-attackers-are-doing-with-your-hacked-site/

Description: WordPress powers over 35% of the internet, making it one of the most popular content management systems. This means that WordPress is also one of the most targeted systems. Hackers understand that if they can become experts at compromising WordPress vulnerabilities, they can target and exploit more sites. With tens of thousands of plugins and themes available, the likelihood of discovering an easily exploitable intrusion vector installed on numerous sites adds to the attractiveness of WordPress as a target for malicious attacks.

WordPress hackers range from inexperienced script kiddies looking to get started to sophisticated crime syndicates. A script kiddie who has very little technical experience may simply go around defacing websites for fun and bragging rights, whereas a black hat hacking syndicate may spend more time evading malware scanners, developing complex command and control networks to maximize their impact, and monetizing compromised sites using SEO spam links and other methods. We will explore these motives a little further and provide you with some in-depth insight on why attackers target and compromise WordPress websites.

Our hope in doing so is that this information will empower you to protect your site, no matter how small or insignificant you might perceive your site to be. There is immense value in any WordPress site, and we hope to empower you to take steps to protect your site from these types of attacks.