The Top 7 WordPress Malware Campaign That Are Still Active

You are having your WordPress website hacked in a frightening and horrible experience, which can leave you feeling violated and in panic. Are you worried that hackers would attack your WordPress website? WordPress websites are prone to attacks on account of their popularity. It is because WordPress powers a third of all the websites on the internet. WordPress is a secure website building platform. However, you would need themes and plugins to run a WordPress site. Plugins and themes comprise vulnerabilities that hackers exploit. So here are some facts that illustrate the importance of top WordPress malware campaigns for your website.

•  WP live chat Plugin has compromised more than 60000 websites.   
• The WordPress GDPR Plugin can switch arbitrary settings on the websites of the victims.  

The top WordPress malware campaigns

There are several ways with the help of which the hackers can break into your site. We have narrowed it down to the five top WordPress malware campaigns, which you should know.

1. WP-VCD: Malware Through Nulled Themes

Today’s top WordPress malware threat is a criminal operation that is known by the name of WP-VCD. It is currently responsible for an array of hacked WordPress sites. The WP-VCD gang doesn’t rely on the vulnerabilities to break into sections. Instead, they depend on webmasters infecting themselves by installing pirated themes and WordPress site plugins. The hang operates many sites through which they offer an array of plugins and pirate themes. 

Interestingly, all these sites follow excellent SEO practices as they get a keyword boost from the hacked sites containing the WP-VCD malware. Once a webmaster downloads these malware-infected plugins and themes, their WordPress sites are hacked within seconds. A backdoor account with the name 100010010 is added to each site, which ensures that WP-VCD gangs can access the website of the victim by being legitimately registered.

2. Buyittraffic malware campaign: Redirection Campaign    

The Buyittraffic malware is a type of malware which redirects your website to other unsecured sites. The Buyittraffic malware can tarnish your brand image and reputation. When redirected to malicious websites, you can land in legal complexities. Attackers usually use various ways to redirect the user. Here are some of them:

• Redirects users through malicious codes by injecting them to the site
• Executing .php codes
• Adding you to malicious websites as ghost admins

In the realm of Buyittraffic malware campaign, the hackers use the adminer script to access and infect your website’s database. Hence, it is suggested that you check for the adminer.php file on your server and eliminate it.

3. Pharma and Keyword hack: SEO Spam Campaign

Pharma spam or hack is a type of SEO spam used by hackers to improve the SEO rank of websites that sell Pharma products. Note that this kind of attack usually involves the addition of new pages to add links for SEO purposes. It is worthwhile here to note that Pharma spam is a type of Black Hat SEO. This is also known as spamdexing. It uses several techniques to place links in other websites. These links redirects your website to other spammy sites. Moreover, Pharma spammers can also place entire spam pages on other websites.    

4. Plugin Exploits: Exploitation of Vulnerable Plugin & Themes

A WordPress site is created with the help of three main elements- the core installation, plugins, and themes. All these three elements have the potential to render a site prone to hacking attempts. Plugin exploits are counted in the list of top WordPress malware campaigns as third-party developers mainly create them. They tend to develop WordPress vulnerabilities too often.

When the developers notice any vulnerability, they promptly fix it and release an upgraded version of the same theme or Plugin. As the site owner, you need to update to the latest version so that your site will be secure. Hackers are aware that vulnerability exists, and not all site owners update their site immediately. The WordPress GDPR plugin exploit allows a hacker to make your website non-compliant with GDPR. This exploit can also result in the addition of fake admin accounts.      

5. Injection Attacks

To be precise, it is quite reasonable for every website to comprise input fields like a contact form or a search bar. WordPress sites also have a comments section in which the visitors enter data. In usual circumstances, this data is accepted and sent to the database so that it can be processed and stored.

These fields also need an appropriate configuration top to sanitize the data entered by the users. In case the validation and sanitization measures are not there, the hackers can exploit it to introduce malicious code. It is worthwhile here to note that a plethora of injection attacks emanate from themes and Plugins. This is the reason that a webmaster should use only Plugins and themes.

6. Stealing of cookies

When elaborating about the top WordPress malware campaigns, cookie stealing is probably one of the most dangerous ones. Have you ever noticed that when you log into a site, your browser prompts you to “save password”? This is done to ensure that the user doesn’t have to enter the password time and again. Browsers can store passwords and user information because of the cookies.

Cookies are tiny bits of data that records the interaction of the visitor with the website. If a hacker can steal your site’s cookies, they can have access to important visitor’s data stored on your website. As a result, the security of your users is also compromised. For instance, hackers can use this data to carry out malicious acts such as defrauding users by utilizing their credit card information.

7. Data Theft

It is common for the users to interact with your website in varied ways. Some of them just read your blog posts, and others contact you via forms. On the other hand, if you run an ecommerce site, then it is normal for the users to buy items from your website. When someone enters payment information on your site, this information gets stored on the server. Payment information can be intercepted while it is being transferred. Using an SSL certificate is the ideal way to safeguard your website’s data. A WordPress security Plugin can also help you receive important alerts if there is any suspicious activity.   

Final thoughts

Hackers have innumerable ways to break into your WordPress site. Also, they invent new ways to trespass into your website way so often! Let’s hope that the above-mentioned top WordPress malware campaigns would help you to keep a tab on your website’s security measures.