The thing about being a hacker is that you have to be patient. You have to wait until the right moment, and then you strike. Your target might not even know they’re under attack until it’s too late. The hackers who have hacked into your website could have been sitting on the sidelines for years, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Note. IBM’s 2020 Data security report says: “In 2022, it took an average of 277 days—about 9 months—to identify and contain a breach.”
In this article, we will discuss some of the reasons why websites get hacked and how you can prevent them from happening again in the future!
Outdated components
Components are the building blocks of a website. They can be any kind of software, like plugins and themes, or even core functionality like authentication and CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete).
Updating these components is important to protect your site from vulnerabilities that hackers could otherwise exploit. Suppose you have outdated components on your site and update them as soon as possible. In that case, you’ll be able to stay more secure and avoid unnecessary downtime for visitors who visit your site regularly.
Unpatched software
Your website is vulnerable to hacking if you don’t apply software updates. Software updates are like patches for the internet, and they protect your site from new attacks by hackers. If you don’t update your software regularly, hackers can take advantage of its vulnerabilities and break into your server or website.
There are many reasons why people need to update their websites, like:
- The security patch that came out recently improves things a lot!
- You want to make sure that any bugs have been fixed, so nothing goes wrong again down the road.
The website is not using firewall and security protocols.
A firewall is a security tool that can be used to prevent hackers from accessing your website. It’s easy to install and can be installed on your website or used with a cloud-based firewall.
- Installing a firewall is simple: follow your chosen software provider’s instructions (video tutorials or documents).
- If you want to set up a simpler version of this kind of protection, simply install a Scuri or Cloudflare plugin for your WordPress website. There are many tutorials out there explaining how exactly you should do this yourself — but if that sounds overwhelming (or even scary), you can get some help from the Lucreds team.
Black hat hackers
Black hat hackers are those who use their skills for malicious purposes. They can gain access to systems by using software vulnerabilities, which is when a bug or flaw in the code of an application allows them entry into the system. Once inside, they can then use this system to launch different attacks on other systems. For example, the hacker may steal data from other systems and/or launch DDoS attacks that take down websites altogether—and these are just some examples!
Misconfigured website
A misconfigured website is a website that needs to be set up properly. The most common reason for this is a lack of knowledge or experience from the owner, but there are also other factors. For example, if you have an old version of WordPress installed on your site and it’s still being used by someone else—and they haven’t updated it in years—you’re setting yourself up for trouble!
So what exactly is wrong with having an outdated version of WordPress? Well, first off, there are security risks associated with using outdated software. Still, there’s also something else: Hacking attempts often target sites with outdated versions because they’re easier to compromise than newer ones. This means that even if hackers don’t manage to take over every aspect of your site right away (which would probably be impossible), they’ll still find plenty of ways to get into your system.
Vulnerable plugins in the content management system
The content management system (CMS) is a program that allows you to set up and maintain your website. It’s like having an IT department for your business—it manages all of the technical aspects of running a website, from setting up pages and adding images and videos to managing updates.
The problem with CMS is that hackers can exploit vulnerabilities in plugins that are installed into it. These plugins allow users who own websites with vulnerable ones to access those sites remotely by exploiting flaws in them. This means hackers could hack into any site using only one vulnerable plugin on their server!
There are many reasons websites get hacked.
We must use preventative measures such as firewall rules and update components to prevent getting hacked.
Often, hacks happen because of outdated components, such as the Java library, which can be easily exploited by hackers who want access to your system. So, for example, suppose you’re not running the latest version of Java or PHP on your server. In that case, it’s possible that someone could take advantage of this vulnerability (and again — misconfigured firewalls aren’t doing their job).
The other reason why websites get hacked is that they’re not using a firewall or security protocols like SSL encryption or authentication mechanisms (like CAPTCHA). Both of these types of tools help protect against unauthorized access. Still, they also increase the latency between you and the server, so if someone else tries hacking into your site while you’re loading up files on their end, then there might be some lag time between when they try something malicious versus when those actions actually happen on either side.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that we need to be aware of what makes our website vulnerable to hacking. If you don’t have the right security in place, it can result in a lot of issues down the road. The best way to prevent this type of thing is by updating outdated components or setting up an ad blocker on your computer before visiting a website.