You might have heard about a major Microsoft website- digitalconstitution.com- that was recently hacked. According to the investigators- the website contained numerous spam pages and links to casinos. The crazy part is- this website is used by Microsoft company to challenge the U.S. federal government’s policies on matters of privacy and surveillance! Although the attackers are unknown at this time, ZDNet have provided some details as to what might have led to the vulnerability of the site. Analysis of the site’s code have shown that the website was using an outdated version of the WordPress. So what can we learn from this incident and how to protect your site from incidents like this?
As I have mentioned in my previous articles, it is crucial to keep your software up to date! When WordPress releases an update- it very likely contains security fixes, bug patches, and, yes, even some new functionality or improvements. So if you are not keeping your software up to date- you may be risking your website’s security.
But it doesn’t stop with just the software. Is your theme up to date? Similarly to the WordPress updates, the themes updates can also contain important fixes. When is the last time you looked at your theme library? Do you really need to keep all those themes? What about your Plugins? Those same principles apply.
This hacking incident and many others shows that no website is immune to those attacks. It doesn’t matter how big your company is or what your website is about. It is very important to take those security measures seriously and better be safe then sorry.
Read more on- “Basic Tips For Protecting Your Website” to learn practical and easy ways to keep your website safe and to discourage potential hackers from even trying to do any harm.
