Once upon a time, when you installed WordPress it automatically created the first (administrative) user with the username 'admin'. As a result there are sill thousands - perhaps tens of thousands - of WordPress sites with a user 'admin'. You…
There is a reason we maintain a mirror or clone of each of our clients' websites. Earlier this week we updating a plugin and it took the entire website down. This was a plugin that we have quite a bit…
Once upon a time, it was common for most web hosting companies to perform nightly backups. I've noticed a tread: What used to be nightly backups in many cases is now weekly. One of the best-known hosting companies has made…
During our daily routine checks of a client's website this morning, we discovered that he had wrongly beed blacklisted as a spammer. His website is on a shared server, and the culprit is actually another website on that same server.…
Unused WordPress themes are perfect places for hackers to hide their code in your website. Wordpress ships with one or more themes names "Twenty Sixteen", "Twenty Fifteen", etc. Since they are common to every WordPress installation, they are an easy…
I get asked that quite a bit. "I'm just a piano teacher/acupuncturist/gardener/etc. Why would someone want to hack my website?" Three reasons: Defacement There are people who run around the internet looking for vulnerable websites either just for fun or…
The website of Panamanian lawyer Mossack Fonseca was hacked. 11.5 million confidential documents that provide detailed information about more than 214,000 offshore companies – including the identities of shareholders and directors – was made public and made front-page news in every major…