There's a well-known saying: "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." This sharply highlights how things work in our world today. Take Facebook, Google, Instagram, and others as examples. All your free services allow these companies to gather extensive data about you and your preferences. They then sell this data to other companies, which use it to target you for ads, products, and services specifically.
When using free plugins and themes on your WordPress site, it's crucial to remain vigilant about potential security vulnerabilities. Hackers often target these free resources as entry points to gain unauthorized access. Therefore, it's essential to thoroughly research and vet any free plugins and themes before integrating them into your site. Regularly updating and monitoring these components can also help prevent potential security breaches.
Nulled Themes and Plugins: Nulled themes and plugins, pirated versions of premium products, often pre-installed with malicious scripts. These scripts can create backdoors, allowing hackers to gain unauthorized access to the website. Once installed, these scripts can infect other themes and plugins on the site and may even spread to other sites on the same server.
Malicious Code and Backdoors: Hackers can embed backdoors in files similar to WordPress core files, such as wp-config.php, and files within the plugins, themes, and uploads folders. These backdoors allow hackers to maintain access to the site even after the initial infection is removed. Standard PHP functions in these backdoors include base64, exec, eval, and system.
WP-VCD Malware: WP-VCD malware is a specific example of pirated themes and plugins being used to install malicious scripts. This malware creates backdoor admin accounts and injects command-and-control (C2) server URLs to execute actions across infected sites. It also spreads to other files and sites on the same server, making it a particularly dangerous threat.
Unsecured Plugins and Themes: Using unsecured or outdated plugins and themes can expose a site to vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. These vulnerabilities can lead to devastating breaches, causing substantial reputational and financial harm. Choosing plugins and themes with strong security credentials and regular updates is crucial to mitigate these risks.
Security Plugins and Scanning: To protect against these threats, it is recommended to use security plugins that can scan for and remove malware. Plugins like Wordfence and Sucuri provide comprehensive security features, including malware scanning, web application firewalls, and login security measures. These tools help detect and prevent malicious code from compromising the site.
What Is Their Ultimate Goal and Why Are They Doing It?
The motivation for hackers varies, but it mainly revolves around gaining access to resources. Hackers, spammers, and scammers have different goals, but they all want to avoid getting caught and let someone else take the blame. Some hackers may delete a website to demonstrate their skills. In contrast, others have more business-oriented intentions, such as using a company's resources to send out mass emails, which can be challenging to do within legal guidelines.
It's crucial to know that Scam emails are designed to deceive individuals and businesses into divulging their usernames and passwords, leading to potential bank account theft. These scammers rely on companies' and individuals' clean records to steal their databases or use their infrastructure for malicious purposes. They aim to remain undetected by popular email providers like Gmail and Yahoo by exploiting others' infrastructure to operate covertly for extended periods.
They may use your email service, host malware on your site, host pages that contain scripts and code to phish, or, even worse, use your server or accounts to mask their identity to break into other websites or organizations with your identity, such as hacking the Pentagon and let your identity be the one to be flagged.
Many of the "free" tools, especially for open-source-type websites like WordPress, may create helpful tools such as themes, templates, and plugins so that they gain access to your backend (this is not all, but the amount is enough to be a threat).
Custom-developed websites, including custom WordPress, that are managed properly can detect anomalies and are built to prevent those issues, as only you and the development team know how they were built.
