What is a hacker attack? How to defend against it? When do they leak customer data?

Hacking attack is always a problem. According to the principle of the weakest link – the security level of an information system is determined by its least secured element. Therefore, it is worth being aware of the dangers that await you, website owner. Below you will find some popular attacks and information on how to counter them. Happy reading!

What are DDoS attacks? DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, are attacks targeted at websites and servers by disrupting network services to deplete application resources. In short, it is flooding a website with artificially generated traffic, which can ultimately cause the site to malfunction or shut down completely. How can you protect yourself from this? First and foremost, ensure you have a properly prepared infrastructure.

Our partner lh.pl equips all servers with Anti DDoS protection, and the sites have daily backups performed at night and are available for the next 30 days.

This is a popular attack that involves injecting code executed by the database. It exploits unsecured forms – it can lead to data theft or deletion of the entire database. In the event of detecting such an attack, a security audit of the site should be performed to locate and secure the injection point. In some cases, personal data may be leaked – which is a GDPR incident. What steps should be taken in such cases? You will learn about this in our partner’s article.

To effectively protect yourself against this attack, an important step is to analyze all data input points. In the case of WordPress, these are mainly forms and API endpoints.

Although it is not strictly an attack on the site, but more on its users, it is worth mentioning due to its consequences. Man in the middle involves eavesdropping on data exchanges between sites. In the absence of an SSL certificate, it is a relatively simple and effective attack. The result can be the leakage of login and password – leading to unauthorized access to the site.

To protect your customers from the inconveniences associated with such an attack, it is worth implementing an SSL certificate and adding HTTP->HTTPS redirects. How to do it, you will learn in the article What is an SSL certificate and why you need it on your site?

Dictionary attacks are nothing new; they involve trying the most popular passwords. A good practice is to use an appropriate number of characters, use special characters, so-called salting of passwords, and not reuse the same passwords for multiple portals.

According to the portal passwordmanager.com, the most popular passwords used in 2024 were:

The best protection is to use a proper password bank. What it is and why it’s worth using, you will learn in our article Password Banks? What Are They For?

As many plugins as there are developers (or even development teams) have an impact on the security of your site. Regular site updates, maintaining certificates, and keeping the PHP version up to date are fundamental to ensuring the security of a WordPress-based site.

If you want to focus on your business without losing attention to the security of your site – check out our offer or contact us directly. A hacker attack doesn’t have to disrupt your business operations.