In 2013 a worldwide brute-force attack struck WordPress installations across almost every web host in existence around the world.

These attacks were caused by botnets (networks of infected computers programmed to attack other computers).

(WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS making it a natural target for attempted attacks by malicious users)

In March 2014, technology sites like Cnet.com began reporting that over 162,000 WordPress-powered sites had been hacked.

(Over 160,000 WordPress sites were attacked in a massive DDoS attack in early 2014. Screenshot image: BlogDefender.com)

According to the Cnet report,

“With some old-fashioned trickery, hackers were able to get more than 162,000 legitimate WordPress-powered Web sites to mount a distributed-denial-of-service attack against another Web site.”

(Source: cnet.com/news/ddos-attack-is-launched-from-162000-wordpress-sites)

As described by security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a well-known flaw to attack unsuspecting WP web sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyber-attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.

When attacks on WordPress sites seem to increase, it’s natural for people to start asking if WordPress really is a secure application for building and running their sites.

WordPress is often the target of attacks by hackers. But do you really need to be concerned about WordPress as a secure web platform?

In this article, you will learn some of the main reasons why you should use WordPress if you are at all concerned about website security.

WordPress Security Explained

Let’s start by looking at some facts …

Thousands of websites and blogs are hacked every year … not just WordPress sites!

The scale of attacks on websites and blogs around the world is massive, and the situation is only going to get worse.

It’s probably safe to assume that if you haven’t been hacked yet, then it’s only a matter of time before someone attempts to hack into your site … regardless of the web platform your website has been built with!

Since it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when before your website is targeted by malicious hackers, are there any advantages that WordPress can offer you in terms of security?

”How Can Open Source Programs Be Kept Safe From Hackers?”

Some people will often try to argue that WordPress cannot be a secure platform for running websites and blogs because it is “open source” and freely available software program.

Open-source CMS programs like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are free to use and anyone can have access to the entire software code.

The argument, then, goes something like this: If anyone can examine the Open Source code for WordPress, then hackers can also easily get hold of the code and go through every single line in great detail, searching for security holes that can be exploited …

(It’s no longer a matter of if, but when before your website is targeted by hackers … WordPress or no WordPress!)

While it’s true that WordPress is a free application and hackers can easily access it and study the code looking for holes or weaknesses (hackers can do the same with any program), the fact that WordPress is a free, open-source platform actually makes it a lot more secure in many ways.

This is because WordPress is supported by a global community consisting of hundreds of software programmers, plugin developers and theme designers who constantly help improve the program and make WordPress more secure …

(A community of web developers worldwide maintain and update. Screenshot source: make.wordpress.org)

WordPress evolves because of the effort of hundreds of committed individuals working around the clock to fix any issues detected by users. Everyone benefits from hundreds of minds committed to improving the software, identifying and fixing security issues and making WordPress safer for every user …

(WordPress is built by a large community of contributors. Screenshot image: WordPress.org)

As soon as any security issues are discovered by developers or users, these are immediately reported in user forums and addressed by the WordPress core development team …

(WordPress is continually being improved by thousands of committed individuals community of users and web developers. Image: make.wordpress.org)

The WordPress community support system, therefore, is solid and formidable and anybody can help contribute to the process of addressing security issues.

For example:

• If you discover bugs and security issues, you can report these by sending an email to security@wordpress.org.
• If you find issues in a WordPress plugin, you can also report these by emailing plugins@wordpress.org.

This is one of the reasons why WordPress releases new security updates so often, and why you need to keep your site regularly up-to-date …

(WordPress frequently releases new version updates to address security weaknesses)

WordPress Vs Proprietary CMS Applications

We’ve just seen that one of the security advantages of using an ”open” platform like WordPress is that users benefit from a large community of developers who continually contribute to improve software security. By contrast, a proprietary or “closed-source” CMS platform is developed by a small team of developers with limited time and resources to provide continuous security monitoring, support, bug fixes and software fixes.

The WordPress CMS is 100% free to download, modify and use, and hundreds of volunteers and expert developers are continually working to improve the platform. Can a proprietary technology company afford to employ as many developers and programmers and still deliver you software that is 100% free to download, use and modify as you wish?

WordPress CMS Vs Other Open Source Platforms

(CMS Platforms include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal)

Whilst on the topic of Open Source content management applications, there is valid research showing that WordPress is actually safer than other Open Source CMS platforms like Drupal and Joomla.

For example, the chart below shows how many security vulnerabilities were found in each of these CMS platforms …

(WordPress experiences fewer security vulnerabilities than other leading CMS platforms. Image: National Vulnerability Database)

Other studies also indicate that, because WordPress is easy to use and to keep updated, when sites using different CMS platforms were tested for security issues, sites run on WordPress had a significant degree of less exposure to risk …

(WordPress users are less exposed to threats than other CMS platform users. Screenshot image: BlogDefender.com)

Don’t Blame WordPress

When WordPress sites get subjected to brute-force attacks, don’t be quick to blame WordPress.

According to a report called “Compromised Websites: An Owner’s Perspective,” published by a nonprofit organization that helps webmasters identify, remediate and prevent website compromises called StopBadware and security vendor Commtouch, most webmasters are not fully aware of the threats their websites are exposed to, how to secure a website, or deal with compromised web security.

In fact, 63% of webmasters surveyed in this report didn’t know how their websites were hacked after an attack …

(Most webmasters don’t know how their sites were hacked. Screenshot: StopBadware.org)

Of immediate concern is the fact that many security-related issues arise from site owners running WordPress on outdated versions of the software …

(Many security issues come from sites running outdated WordPress versions. Screenshot: Sucuri.net)

When WordPress security issues were looked at in more detail, it was found that only a small percentage of vulnerabilities discovered in third-party code are found in the WordPress core software, while most security issues are found in plug-ins and developed externally …

(WP Security Issues. Image source: WebDesign.org)

Like all robust software applications, WordPress is updated regularly in order to deal with new security problems that may arise. Improving security is an ongoing concern, and to that end, you should always keep up to date with the latest version of WordPress.

WordPress … Secure Enough For Banks To Use!

The amount of misinformation about how secure WordPress is has even caused the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, to chime into the discussion.

In a blog post entitled “A Bank Website on WordPress” posted on April 15, 2015, Matt wrote the following about WordPress security …

There’s a thread on Quora asking “I am powering a bank’s website using WordPress. What security measures should I take?” The answers have mostly been ignorant junk along the lines of “Oh NOES WP is INSECURE! let me take my money out of that bank”, so I wrote one myself, which I’ve copied below.

I agree there’s probably not a ton of benefit to having the online banking / billpay / etc portion of a bank’s website on WordPress, however there is no reason you couldn’t run the front-end and marketing side of the site on WordPress, and in fact you’d be leveraging WordPress’ strength as a content management platform that is flexible, customizable, and easy to update and maintain.

Matt then goes on to provide a couple of security tips, before stating the following …

For an example of a beautiful, responsive banking website built on WordPress, check out Gateway Bank of Mesa AZ. WordPress is also trusted to run sites for some of the largest and most security-conscious organizations in the world, including Facebook, SAP, Glenn Greenwald’s The Intercept, eBay, McAfee, Sophos, GNOME, Mozilla, MIT, Reuters, CNN, Google Ventures, NASA, and literally hundreds more.

As the most widely used CMS in the world, many people use and deploy the open source version of WordPress in a sub-optimal and insecure way, but the same could be said of Linux, Apache, MySQL, Node, Rails, Java, or any widely-used software. It is possible and actually not that hard to run WordPress in a way that is secure enough for a bank, government site, media site, or anything.

Millions of businesses around the world use WordPress to build their websites, including banks, large organizations, and e-commerce sites, not just bloggers.

Other Issues That Can Affect Security

Other areas that can affect website security include issues such as:

• No platform is completely protected from security threats. As many as 90% of all websites across all platforms are vulnerable to being attacked, mostly due to using outdated software.
• The biggest threat of all content management systems seems to be the users themselves. For example, many users ignore good password security practices.
• Lack of constant system monitoring. All security systems need to be constantly monitored, tested, updated and improved.
• Webhosting setup. For example, websites on shared hosting servers are only as secure as the least secure site on the grid, so if someone else on your shared server gets their site hacked into, then every site on your server becomes vulnerable to being hacked as well.

There’s No Reason Why You Should Not Use WordPress

As this article has hopefully shown, WordPress is a secure web platform. As long as you implement basic web security measures and keep your WordPress software (and plugins, themes, etc.) regularly up-to-date, there is really no reason to avoid using WordPress.

WordPress Security – Tips

To learn about ways to protect your WordPress site from brute force attacks see this article:  WordPress Brute-Force Attack Prevention Measures

A vulnerable web site offers hackers with a valuable resource to launch distributed attacks, spread malware and engage in information theft. Blog Defender makes your WordPress site invisible to hackers and bots. Go here to learn more:

• How To Prevent Malicious Cyber Attacks On Your WordPress Site From Hackers

If you are currently using an older version of WordPress remember to back up everything before updating your software to benefit from the latest security updates. This way, if things don’t go as planned, you can always restore.

If you don’t want to back up your site manually, there are many plugins you can use. You can read about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your site backups here: Back Up, Clone & Protect Your WordPress Website With Backup Creator WP Plugin

References Used In This Article

The above statistics were referenced from various sources, including those listed below:

• ITProPortal.com
• National Vulnerability Database
• BlogDefender.com
• UpAndUpStudios.com
• StopBadware.org
• Sucuri.net
• WebDesign.org
• Quora.com
• Ma.tt

Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the security benefits of using WordPress please see our related posts section or subscribe to receive updates and notifications when new articles are published.

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