Dangers of Compromised Websites

Your website is a valuable prize for cybercriminals. The abuse of sites by bad actors affects both their owners and the greater security ecosystem. For website developers and website development agencies, understanding the threats is crucial to maintaining safety and integrity.

This article serves as a timely reminder that although not all website platforms are created equal, WordPress sites are not invulnerable. Website development needs to include robust security measures to protect against potential vulnerabilities.

It’s a common-sense step to secure your website wherever possible. This involves regularly checking to see if there are any relevant updates available for your website, implementing the updated version, and performing basic testing to ensure function is as expected. This requires development skills—therefore time and expense to properly implement.

Currently, this service is optional but highly recommended by our technical team. We call the service Security and Stability Updates, an essential consideration for any website development strategy.

You might be thinking, yes it sounds good—but do I really need this?

In our view, it’s a very sensible option because of two important factors:

1. The likelihood of a website compromise caused by outdated software modules on your website. While WordPress sites are more secure, it can certainly occur. The likelihood increases over time if your site remains out of date. In general terms, this risk may also be increasing over time, as such malicious activity becomes more commonplace.
2. The serious nature of what may occur in the event of a compromise.

Cybercriminals can exploit resources like processing power, bandwidth, and the hosting available via compromised websites to enable all kinds of malicious activities. It’s important to note that compromised sites can be exploited in various ways, making robust cybersecurity a priority for any website development agency.

This is the focus of this news article and is detailed below.

Redirection via your compromised site: There are various ways this can be implemented, but generally, the idea is to send a site visitor to another website so that they can gain revenue (Ads or Purchases), or as a method of infecting the visitor’s machine with malware hosted on the site the visitor is redirected to.

Malware: The term “malware” covers a range of malicious software designed to cause harm. Infected sites may directly install malware on a user’s machine to steal private information or take control of the user’s machine and attack other computers. Sometimes users download this malware because they think they are installing safe software and aren’t aware of malicious behavior. Other times, malware is downloaded without their knowledge. Common types of malware include ransomware, spyware, viruses, worms, and Trojan horse.

Exploiting the function of a site module: This may involve directly exploiting a website CMS module or using it as a stepping stone to install software toolkits on your website for specific functionality the attackers desire to use. This would include (but is not limited to) your site hosting pages for phishing, spam, or pornography.

Other malicious activities: This could include vandalism or destroying the data of your website. It may also include encrypting the data of your website so that it becomes non-functional (so-called ransomware).

Symptoms of a compromised website: In rare cases of site vandalism or ransomware, the malicious actors make it plainly obvious to the site owner (and the rest of the world) that the site has been compromised.

In most cases, though, the approach is stealthy, so that site owners are unaware the problem even exists. A compromised site may not be detected for a long period of time.

Although we go above and beyond with enterprise-class software updates, website developers and any website development agency need to remain vigilant in safeguarding sites from these threats. This is essential not just for general business security but especially in fields like medical cybersecurity, where the stakes are incredibly high.