The sheer number of attacks on websites and blogs worldwide is rising, and it’s getting worse.
It’s probably safe to assume that if your website or blog hasn’t been hacked yet, then it’s inevitable that at some point in time someone will attempt to hack into your site.
On March 11, 2014, technology sites like Cnet.com began reporting that 162,000 WordPress-powered websites had been hacked.
Thousands of websites and blogs are attacked every year! Could your website be next?
(Image source: BlogDefender website)
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)
According to security firm Sucuri, hackers had leveraged a flaw to attack unsuspecting WP sites and direct a distributed-denial-of-service cyber-attack (DDoS) towards another popular website.
Every web site with a security vulnerability can can provide an opportunity to hackers. All websites have value to hackers. Corporate web sites, personal blogs, government web sites … even web sites owned by online security experts can and have been targeted.
If someone can find a security flaw that lets them gain stealth control of your web site, the blog can then be used to target other valued web sites.
The reality is that brute-force software bots are most likely scouring for weaknesses and trying to hack into your web site at this very moment. Whether they can break into your site successfully depends on how hard you will make things for hackers or botnets to continue trying until they work out a way to get access, or decide to look for an easier target.
How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress Site?
Does your website run on WordPress? If so visit Hackertarget.com and run your site through their WordPress security check …
(Hackertarget – Website Security Check Image source: Hackertarget.com)
You will see that the check returns a number of results and information about your WordPress installation …
(WordPress security check results. Screenshot image: Hackertarget.com)
It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can see all of this information about your WordPress site, then so can hackers.
(Image source: BlogDefender.com)
Being able to see which version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed on your site, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all valuable information to hackers, as this informs them about exploitable holes or weaknesses, especially where the owners haven’t updated their software versions.
Fortunately, there is a simple way you can stop broadcasting all of this information about your site and make your site invisible to hackers and botnets.
Blog Defender
Product Description
Blog Defender is a suite of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.
Matt Garrett, the developer of BlogDefender developed BlogDefender after noticing that a WordPress site he set up for his mother had been hacked into and suspended. This site had practically nothing of value to offer, yet it still was targeted by hackers.
Matt only became aware of what had happened after being contacted by his host and noticing that a significant amount of suspicious activity had taken place within his site, as well as the addition of a number of malicious files designed to lure visitors to the site and hijack their Paypal account information.
(Image source: Blog Defender)
This simple example shows that that all websites have value to hackers.
Blog Defender scans you WordPress installation for security holes …
And then shows you how to easily fix these …
Blog Defender – Plugins
Blog Defender comes with 3 plugins:
Plugin #1 “Automated Backups” in the Blog Defender suite provides automated backups …
(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)
The “Automated Backups” plugin lets you do secure backups to your server, third-party servers and well-known cloud-based backup solutions using different backup methods, schedule complete or partial backups, exclude files or tables from your backups, restore previous backups, replace URLs (useful when migrating sites to different domains or server locations), search and replace text strings in your WordPress database, perform malware scans and blacklist checks automatically, and more.
The second plugin provides WordPress security …
(Screenshot source: Blog Defender)
The “WordPress Security” plugin provides a range of vital site security functions (see “Plugin Features” section below).
The third plugin lets you scan your files and content to see if code in your files has been modified, and fix any problems it detects …
(Screenshot source: BlogDefender website)
Pro Plugin # 3 also scans content to see if any malicious content have been added to your site files, bans bad bots, blocks brute force attacks and detects any content leeching (where others benefit from your hard work without reciprocating the favor).
Video Tutorials
In addition to the plugins, the Blog Defender security product suite also includes several training videos and downloadable documentation that will show you exactly what you need to do to protect your site from hackers …
(Image source: Blog Defender)
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here we have listed just some of the many benefits of using Blog Defender to make your WordPress site invisible to hackers and botnets on your web site:
Be Up And Running In Minutes
The Blog Defender plugins are very easy to install. Simply upload a zip file containing the plugin files to your Plugin folder via your administrator section and activate.
Simple And Easy To Follow
Blog Defender can be used as an easy-to-follow training product that walks you through the website security process and shows you what to do, including how to set everything up, and even which WordPress plugins you can install for free to get things done without paying additional or unnecessary expenses.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Protect your website from hackers, spammers, bad bots, data mining tools and malicious users whose aims is to exploit your site for their own personal and financial gain.
- Protects Intellectual Property From Being Stolen – If you are a digital product author (e.g. downloadable ebooks, video training, etc.), your work can be stolen and end up as freeware on peer-to-peer sharing sites.
- Avoid Getting Suspended By Your Web Host And Banned By Search Engines – When a site has been hacked, expect to go through a serious amount of inconvenience and heartache. It can take days to uncover the problem and sort through the issues these have caused. In the meantime, your, blog could get suspended by your webhost, or even deindexed in search engines. And if this is not painful enough, your contacts could be spammed, your subscriber list and financial details can be stolen, you could end up being fined or even charged with fraud, and a whole lot more.
Plugin Features
Blog Defender hide your WordPress website or blog from hackers and bots.
Blog Defender addresses the following security areas:
- Hosting Security Advisory
- Plugin Security Audits
- Theme Security Audits
- Anti Brute Force Security
- Anti Cross-Site Scripting
- MySQL Database Security
- Nefarious Traffic Blocking
- Hide WordPress ‘Tell Tale’ Signs
- Anti-Comment Spam Blocking
- Monitoring Files
- Link Tracking
- Block Known Offenders
- Automate Core Updates
- WordPress Security Audit
- Tightening Server Security
- Kick Out Policy
- Online Reputation Checking
- And More …
Blog Defender follows a logical process to help secure your web site, addressing potential hosting security issues, using tools to quickly identify risky WP themes and WP plugins, and then implementing website-wide security using the tools and plugins provided.
(Blog Defender WordPress security process. Screenshot image: Blog Defender)
Feedback From Users
Here are a couple of the testimonials and comments customers have written about Blog Defender:
“You are literally walked through the process!” Nikki Stephens, www.nikkistephens.com
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”Since working with blogs, I… like many others, have been concerned about how to handle the constant threat of blog attacks. After having a look at Blog Defender you can’t help but become most aware of the vulnerable areas all bloggers need to protect. Blog Defender is viable WordPress blog security prevention system that offers video instruction along with 3 software plugins that are free to download. The instruction shows the optimum settings on how to use the free plugins that will allow you top level force against blog hacker attacks.” Micheal Nicholas, Impact Info Marketing
Useful Tips
According to Matt Garrett, the plugin developer, no Blog Defender-secured websites were hacked since Blog Defender’s original release.
The product developer states on his site …
“With the volume of attacks nowadays … we probably won’t hold forever, so we’ve been busy creating even tougher WordPress security.”
The war on hackers is an escalating arms race and all security solutions are only as good as the knowledge and tools that developers can currently access. The latest release of Blog Defender creates an easier WordPress security solution that doesn’t need constant attention, is quite inexpensive and it’s as good if not better than most web security products or services currently being offered at a higher price.
Product Support
The product is well-supported, can be used by both Mac and PC users, is compatible with the latest WordPress release and is backed by a no-risk, thirty day, 100% refund guarantee.
Software Cost
Blog Defender is normally available for personal use only on unlimited sites. When we last checked, however, it was also being sold with Developer rights, allowing users to secure client sites as well.. Price = $47.00.
Note: Pricing details of Blog Defender depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price set by the plugin seller when you visit the site and there may be additional upsells or one-time offers after purchasing.
Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing:
Additional Information
For help documentation and tutorials, FAQs, support helpdesk, contact details and more, visit the Blog Defender website.
In Conclusion
Regardless of the kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.
Adopting security procedures like the one that Blog Defender provides, will help you understand what’s going on in your site and where the vulnerabilities are, what hosting companies can and can’t do if the security on your website is compromised, what security features to look for in a webhost, and how to avoid major security risks without paying a lot of money.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Blog Defender Security Solution For WordPress Blogs
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