I have a WP install, and every few weeks some hackers keep adding some bunk script to the bottom of certain files, making the WP site not function. I've changed the user/pass to WP and this obviously isn't working. I'm thinking since they are effecting files that are not visible via the WP login files (which are just theme files) then does this mean they are getting access to the FTP and making their hacks there? If they are getting into FTP then why wouldn't they just remove all docs?
Any insight would be greatly appreciate it. While I appreciate the billable hours to find/remove this code every few days the client isn't as excited about it as I am.
then does this mean they are getting access to the FTP and making their hacks there?
Likely yes. There are a lot of automated hacks of sites to include scripts/iframes pointing at security hole exploits.
These exploits typically install a fake-antivirus program and other trojans, including, often, FTP password stealers. These compromised FTP accounts are then used to infect other sites in the same way.
So, you need to ensure any and every machine that is used to access the FTP site is totally clean. Don't trust one single anti-virus to say you're clean, because today's anti-virus is utterly useless at catching the wide range of trojans out there today.
Especially don't trust an antivirus that claims to have ‘cleaned’ an infection, because it is very likely it hasn't cleaned everything. If you find a trojan or have at some point recently had an AV find a trojan (that isn't a false positive, another huge problem of today's hopeless anti-virus software), it's time to reinstall the OS because that's the only way to be sure.
Then change the passwords again, worry about all the other passwords of yours it might have stolen, and finally migrate to SFTP for uploading your files. FTP is an insecure ancient relic that nobody should still be using for admin in this century.
(Another possibility would be that the host itself was hacked, if you're sharing a server. Check other sites on the same machine that aren't accessible through your FTP account and see if they're affected the same.)
If they are getting into FTP then why wouldn't they just remove all docs?
Where would be the profit in that?
The vast majority of exploits out there today are from criminal businessmen after users' cash, not hacker kids doing it for fun.
You can try installing...
"Akismet" Plug-in
WP-SpamFree
I am using 3 plugins together:
Akismet
Spam Free Wordpress
WP-SpamFree
I think you may try install even more and see if it help solving the problem.
Update to latest version.
Related
I am working on a Wordpress website hosted on Godaddy and struggling with a Malware issue.
Every now and then the webpages start displaying thousands of random links on top of the pages.
When I searched for the texts in the content files, the only place I could find them was in comet cache.
If I delete the cache files, the links go away but again come back after few days.
Can anyone please suggest how can I prevent such a scenario and what all steps I can take to secure my website from such vulnerabilties.
Many thanks in advance.
There's a number of things that could be causing it. Check all of the following to help remove security holes:
Are you running the latest version of WordPress? If not, there could be a known vulnerability that is being exploited.
Are all your plugins up to date? For the same reason as above - a poorly written WordPress plugin can open up security holes.
Do the WordPress files and folders have the correct CHMOD permissions on the server? If not, you're asking for trouble.
I'd recommend any/all of the following as further reading:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/wordpress-security/
https://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
If you don't want to do this work on your own, and you're working with GoDaddy, they offer (and now own) Sucuri which is a security service that will scan and clean your site. You can do this one-time, or pay for a monthly service that will continuously protect and restore your site.
I have made the case for using WordPress as a CMS for an important project.
IT has challenged me to build out this base WP installation alongside the local (WAMP) served intranet and lock it down the best I can. They will then attack the installation with enterprise level penetration testing software.
I am only privy to a minimum amount of details however some security tools I am up against have been mentioned and will be used in conjunction with enterprise level software:
Kali.org
Tools from darknet.org.uk
Watabo
What I've done:
Wiped all basic WP out-of-the-box data such as Administrator username, changed login page URL, removed ajax calls, leveraged all options within iThemes Security plugin (which is pretty impressive) and a few of my own.
My question is for advanced advice on securing WordPress running 2015 theme and its PHP framework and Database. Proper htaccess configuration and possible pitfalls. Advice on any advanced methods of securing a website where it's likely to fail a pen test.
It's not easy to make a website completely invulnerable, especially if you have chosen Wordpress.
You should update your Wordpress website constantly. It means that you have to follow all the updates and install them immediately. Sometimes it's not easy to do, if everything is working as it should, and the database is not small. Wordpress is the most popular open source CMS in the world and many people want to crack it, write crawlers which are searching vulnerabilities online etc.
Simple steps to increase the security of any website:
Close a port if you don't use it or install firewall, tcpwrapped etc.
Don't use FTP, ever. Use SSH instead.
Don't make rights 777 on the whole folder. Make it 555 and when you need to upload some image or something else change the rights to 777 or 755 (if you do it by ssh). After doing your job change rights back to 555. Nobody couldn't upload payload or other malicious code to your website through the front end if it's not allowed for writing.
Check your website for sql injection vulnerability.
Don't use simple passwords. You could even change your passwords every month.
Don't duplicate passwords.
Regularly update your software.
For back end security you could use some IDS, for example Snort - https://www.snort.org/, but it's not easy to configure properly. Furthermore you should understand how a network works, tcp/ip, attack types and so much more.
Use OpenBSD as your server operating system if you do not understand the information security well. It was created with an emphasis on increased security.
Take some network scanner (for example nmap) and test your server for vulnerabilities.
Finally: I wouldn't recommend to use Wordpress for the reliable security :) and to say more I need to take a look at the website.
My apologies in advance if I am posting it in the wrong forum.
I have a WordPress site. Every couple of days, a new user is added as an "Administrator" as shown below
I have changed my password many times using complex passwords but to no use. I even searched on Google and have read links like this one.
I have also unchecked the option "Anyone can register"
However, I am unable to stop them from registering.
Fortunately, no malicious activity has been noticed (Ex: Deletions/Unwanted posts etc)
Please advise me on what I can do to stop these?
You clearly have a more serious compromise, like an uploaded malicious script or an unpatched vulnerability. You need to rebuild your site from scratch (clean install of the current versions of WP and any plugins and themes, using a known-good database export) ASAP before something really bad happens.
Unfortunately, it's impossible to say what happened without digging through your server. My guess is that somebody exploited a vulnerability and uploaded a script. It could be anything - an hole in the WP core, a plugin, or a theme; a malicious plugin or theme; a stolen password; a breach of another site on the same server; or a number of other things.
Regardless of what happened, the only safe fix is to rebuild the site. If you have data backups, you can achieve this in a few hours.
I strongly recommend installing the security plugin WordFence to help prevent similar problems in the future. (I have no affiliation with WordFence, but use it on a number of sites.)
Finally, you might want to read this discussion on security.stackexchange.com. The consensus in this situation is "nuke it from orbit." Good luck!
Someone is making a SQL injection in your site.
If you want to prevent this in future, you should do some things.
Rebuild your website from scratch.
Install some of the security plugins, like Bulletproof Security, Wordfence, iThemes Security. I suggest you to buy the license of Bulletproof, or use the free version + one of the others. And be careful for the equal settings.
The most common attack are with SQL Injection XSS, Plugin exploits and of course brute-forcing the admin pass. You should upgrade every plugin and Wordpress every time when you see a new version.
Use less plugins. They are one of the main reason for hacked websites. If you use Linux, Ican tell you how to scan your website for vulnerabilities. Or just tell me the url, and I will tell you the results.
Also change your /wp-admin path, there are a lot of bots who search the web and make bruteforce attacks.
Also is important to use different admin username from admin or Admin. And use strong passwords. It's a good practice when you make a new Wordpress installation, to do two more users. The first will be an Author and will post everything in the site, the second you should make with Administration role. After that delete the first admin user and start the new one.
Hackers knows that almost every time the user with id:1 is the admin, so they can try to access again. So in this case your admin will be with id:3, and again don't use username like admin and etc.
Best regards and wish you luck.
Kasmetski
Check index.php, wp-admin/index.php to see if they have been modified. Usually the following line of code is added to the top of the index.php file. A code starting with 'required' is usually added.
The file being ‘required’/’included’ here contains malicious code which is executed along with each run of WordPress. Such code can generate fake pharma pages, Japanese SEO spam pages and other malware infections.
Delete the #require code from the file after comparing it with the contents of the core WP files from it’s GitHub repository.
Check if there are any new files in the root of the server or /wp-admin folder that were not created by you. Some of the files that you may find are:
Marvins.php
db_.php
8c18ee
83965
admin.php
buddy.zip
dm.php
If you find any of the above suspicious files, take a backup and delete them.
Source: https://www.getastra.com/blog/911/fix-wordpress-admin-dashboard-wp-admin-hack/
Last Wednesday a variety of the WordPress sites I manage got hacked, they were infected with a Viagra link (malware is so original).
I noticed in the wp-includes directory a file called utils.php (wp-includes/js/tinymce/utils/utils.php), also an addition to my general-template.php for the get_footer function.
This hack seems to only affect Google search results for sites, not the site when directly viewed by entering the URL, i.e your cached site will show a malware infested mess and lose ranking, meanwhile you will wonder why due to the site looking fine when viewed.
My host (TSO Host) have cleaned up the sites, didn't even need to ask, but I have no idea how the infection got there in the first place.
So my question is, does anyone know how the breach happens and what I can do to prevent it, other than the usual security tips?
This happened to a site that I spent weeks cleaning up. I can give you a few pointers:
Go through the Wordpress core files (under wp-admin and wp-includes) and delete all files that you don't see in the default wordpress instillation. I've never seen a plugin create a file in one of those 2 directories. After this, it'd be a good idea to re-install Wordpress, just in case they changed any of the existing files.
After that, change your Wordpress/FTP/SSH passwords as they've likly been cracked. Install WP Better Security. It seems a little annoying at first, but you can monitor everything with it, change the login slug, remove version info hackers can use to find security holes, black-list known hackers, and so much more.
Finally, this last one will take some time. Google your theme and each one of your plugins, and see if Wordpress has stopped using them because they were a security vulnerability. You'd be surprised at how many plugins haves holes. Try to avoid really new plugins, and try to use the same plugin for as many different sites as you can. If you're hosting more than one site on the same server and one of the sites gets hacked, they're all hacked.
It sounds like a pain, and it is a little bit, but after you're done you'll feel so much better knowing that you're in control of everything. Trust me.
Well, with entirely file-based CMS you can easily put the whole directory into version control system to record any changes to the site. The synchronization with the server would be also trivial because it would only involve uploading the files via ftp.
With these benefits in mind, I am a little puzzled about the popularity of databases as the only storage mode, even when the CMS in question is meant to be used by amateurs for small websites.
How does your versioning and synchronization workflow looks like?
What kind of simplified versioning/synchronization workflow would you suggest for a casual, non-tech, WordPress user, to give them the benefit of working locally and encouraging them to have a backup of their site?
Most CMS systems nowadays tend to have some or other backup solution in place to help you. Since Wordpress is a CMS for the masses and also caters for the non-tech population, you're sure to find a plugin that can help you with this. I know it's built-in backup solution just backups posts etc. to XML, but even this does a pretty decent job of restoring over a clean wordpress installation and working fine.
But I found this plugin (which works for Wordpress and Joomla) by asking Google, which most probably is the answer to your question: XCloner
Also in terms of workflow, specifically for Wordpress, don't give the user Admin privileges, but editor or contributor or something, so they can still edit content, etc. but not make changes that could mess up the CMS itself. And maybe this XCloner plugin can do some kind of recurring backup or something. Otherwise, I suggest you move to a LAMP stack hosting environment where you can at least have cron jobs setup to backup your databse and files regularly. Most hosing companies do this in any case at no cost.
Wordpress also keeps revisions of all posts and pages, so if a user doesn't like an update they've made, the full revision history is available. Be sure to check screen options at the top to see that Revisions is checked, if you aren't seeing this option. Kind of a nice built-in.
Can also (depending on host) have scheduled database/file backups through cPanel, in addition to scheduled database backup plugins through WordPress. Some will save remotely or even email the database out.