Page 64 - Cyber Warnings

Odd Search Engine Results

Black hat search engine optimizers use hacked sites for backlinks and to spam search engine
results. A hacker may add lots of keyword-stuffed pages to your site in the hope of attracting
traffic and sending it to their domain. The pages won’t be visible to logged-in users, but they
may be visible to everyone else.

Unusual Redirects

If your site has a decent-sized audience, the attackers may redirect visitors to sites they control,
often spam advertising sites or sites loaded with malware.

If your users report anomalous redirects to other sites, it’s a strong indicator that your
WordPress site has been compromised.

Altered Files

If hackers are to do anything useful with a compromised site, they have to make some
alterations to its files, usually by adding PHP or JavaScript files that make the site do what they
want.

WordPress Security Plugins

As you can see, there are lots of ways you could find out that your site has been compromised,
but the signs are obscure and, in all likelihood, you won’t notice anything at all until it’s too late.

WordPress plugins like Sucuri Security and Wordfence are designed to make it easier for you to
find and fight attacks. Both include Web Application Firewalls, malware scanners, and file
integrity monitoring tools that actively analyze a site for signs of attack and compromise.

WordPress is a fantastic content management system, and with a little care, it’s as secure as
could be hoped for. But in the hostile environment of the web, you need to be on your guard.

About the Author

Graeme Caldwell -- Graeme works as an inbound marketer for Nexcess, a
leading provider of Magento and WordPress hosting. Follow Nexcess on
Twitter at @nexcess, Like them on Facebook and check out their
tech/hosting blog, http://blog.nexcess.net/.

64 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine October 2016 Edition
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