Using a site built on WordPress? Make sure you’re keeping security in mind—because your content might be in danger of a spam attack.
A recent BuzzFeed News article describes how networks of hackers are attacking sites large and small—including of political figures and celebrities—in an effort to promote content for a maximum position in Google.
“Websites of all types and sizes, and especially those that use the open-source version of WordPress, are hacked to inject links to manipulate search engine results,” authors Craig Silverman and Dean Sterling Jones write.
Often, these black-hat exploits take advantage of WordPress’ wide use and common design to break into sites and inject links into old content. Speaking to the authors, Dan Walmsley of the first-party WordPress security tool Jetpack noted that the platform’s high popularity was a key factor in encouraging the exploits.
“WordPress has world-class SEO built in to the platform and [is] extensible via plugins, which of course is one reason that it’s so successful, but also makes it an attractive target for link farming and other forms of SEO arbitrage,” Walmsley told the outlet.
If you’re using a site based on WordPress, keeping it up to date and using highly secure passwords is imperative, while alternative content management approaches such as JAMstack could help mitigate such security concerns in the future.
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