Potential Vulnerabilities of WordPress Self Hosting

WordPress is an interactive blogging platform & great CMS  and working in conjunction with a SQL database to store data files. It is the mostly used blogging platform that powering 50 million blogs all over the web the number which comprises both self-hosted and sub-domain blogs.

Having such a huge amount of content source of web it is always the target of the hackers to hack the wordpress sites and leak the confidential data’s of the people. If you have some awareness about the wordpress vulnerabilities from where hackers gain advantage of your files, then you will become careful in handling those files in next time.

1. Its Version

– According to wordpress.org, 40% of self-hosted sites run on the versions 2.3 to 2.9 which are highly vulnerable because these versions don’t have immunity to latest attacks like Zero-day attack, so they can be easily hacked. This is the reason behind forcing you to upgrade the latest updated wordpress versions.

2. Third Party Plugins and Scripts

– WordPress has huge number of developers who develop various plugins and themes for the users. In this, 80% of the scripts are not tested by wordpress so there is every possibility of having malwares in the scripts or plugin you install in your server.

To avoid such situations, be sure to read the reviews of the users from Google or in wordpress forum about the plugin and then install the plugin.

3. SQL Database

– In company side the database access is given only to the person who is experts in that field but in self-hosted hosting it is open to all users. Users are free to create, edit and delete database from their hosting cPanel account so improper using of those database will lead to major attacks in your server that may even lead to severe data losses. SQL database is the valuable assets of wordpress because it contains content, media and other files, so it should be handled properly.

4. Content and media

- Content can be easily copied from your blog without permission. Likewise with media, this can also be linked to and displayed on other sites by a technique called “Hotlinking”. If they get high traffic for a page which renders media files from your hosting, ultimately you will gradually lose your bandwidth. To avoid such circumstances block those hotlinking blogs by tweaking your .htaccess files of your hosting (or) simply install this hotlinking protection plugin.

5. Web Server -

Server technologies and wider networks can be hacked directly. If you host a website in legitimate hosting then chances are less for hacking, instead if you host your data’s in any cheap web hosting then you are at high risk of hacking attacks.

So be cautious in choosing right web hosting provider for your business or blog otherwise you may confront a serious security issues in future.

Hope the give tips will educate you the basic security vulnerabilities of wordpress, if I missed anything here do let us know in comments.

Author Bio – 

Roy Stephen is a writer, blogger and social media enthusiasts who had worked previously for various firms to leverage their rankings. He currently writes for the site New Hostgator coupon code, a site where you can get coupon code and also Hostgator tutorials to guide you in hosting.