What Makes a Site an Attractive Target for Hackers?
WordPress powers more than 40% of the websites on the internet, which makes the Content Management System (CMS) one of the most targeted platforms by hackers due to its popularity. Hackers target websites for more than just data; they also target your server resources, search engine ranking, and even set up their own content. In 2025 alone, a report highlights 11,334 new vulnerabilities, a 42% jump from 2024.
To understand how secure WordPress is, see How Secure is WordPress?
Understanding the Threat Landscape
Before protecting your site, it pays to know exactly what you’re protecting yourself against. Many website owners think a hacker in a black hoodie will sit down and type code to access their site. But in reality, most of the WordPress hacks are completely automated.
Bots and Automated Scripts
Hackers create scripts (bots) that continuously scan millions of websites for vulnerabilities, 24 hours a day. The bots will inevitably discover any vulnerability on your website, whether you get ten visitors or a hundred thousand a month. Bots continuously crawl the entire web, probing for known plugin vulnerabilities, outdated core versions, and weak login credentials.
Brute Force Attacks
Brute force attacks occur when an automated system tries out thousands of password combinations until it successfully cracks your login credentials.
Credential Stuffing
If your password was ever used by any other online platform where there was a data leak, bots will automatically try using that password on your WordPress website.
Malware and Code Injection
After gaining access to your site, the attacker then uses malware or code injection to take control of your website, allowing them to steal your data, hijack your users, and even use your servers for crypto-mining activities.
What Makes a Website a Common Target?
With that context in mind, here’s what actually makes a WordPress site stand out to attackers.
Outdated WordPress Core, Themes, and Plugins
This is one of the major contributors to compromised WordPress websites. Every time there is a new patch on the core, a theme, or a plugin, the vulnerabilities fixed are also publicly disclosed. This makes any site running an old version of the theme, plugin, or the core a target. Moreover, since these plugins and themes have been developed by third parties, some of them end up abandoned and not updated when newer versions of PHP, the Core, and many other connected parts of the stack are updated. This is one of the easiest roadmaps for hackers to target a site. In recent years, plugins have accounted for over 90% of newly disclosed vulnerabilities. The remaining vulnerabilities are almost fully covered by themes, as the core is audited by a dedicated team. Automated scanners are known to scan for some of these vulnerabilities, such as file upload flaws, and exploit them as entry points within a few hours of new patch updates.
How to fix it: Enable auto-updates for core and trusted plugins/themes where possible, while checking for updates at least each week. Audit installed plugins and themes, and remove any plugin that is no longer supported. Any plugin not supported in over a year is a red flag. This is a consistent practice that should be done without skipping for longer periods of time.
Weak or Reused Login Credentials
Brute-force is one of the most common ways to gain entry to websites. Bots are able to run thousands of trials per minute against the admin login page, and if any of the passwords have been reused from a previous breach, or are an easy guess, with no Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), the site is an easy win. Sites using the default “admin” username are highly vulnerable, as they already do half the work for the hackers to only crack the password.
How to fix it: Never use “admin” as a username, and avoid using similar passwords, but assign a unique password to each login you have. Add a login attempt limiter on your site to prevent guessing a password more than three times. A 2FA authentication step is also key to prevent any entry if there is a successful password breach.
No Web Application Firewall (WAF)
A WAF blocks malicious traffic by blocking already known attack signatures, malicious bots, and suspicious server requests before they even reach the server. A site without one is already vulnerable to automated scans for WordPress vulnerabilities on existing sites.
How to fix it: Set up a reliable WAF, be it application-level (Wordfence, Sucuri) or edge-level (Cloudflare, Sucuri Firewall). Edge WAFs tend to be more effective because they block the malicious traffic even before it gets to the server. However, firewall security is just one of the layers. Take a look at the list of things server-side security includes.
Poor File and Directory Permissions
File permissions matter in the WordPress ecosystem, as they determine who has permission to read and write to any file or directory. For example, having a world-writable wp-config.php or directories set to 777 gives attackers an easier path to injecting malicious code into the site with temporary access, which can lead to full site access.
How to fix it: Default 755 for directories and 644 for files. Set wp-config.php to either 440 or 400. Most reputable hosting providers will check this on request, or you can use a security plugin.
Lack of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
Having a strong password alone is not enough. They can be phished, leaked, or even brute-forced with enough time. Without 2FA, a password is all one needs to access the admin dashboard, without even your knowledge. Sites with only password-only authentication tend to be a top target, with only a single barrier needed to overcome to gain access.
How to fix it: Ensure each admin or editor on your site has 2FA enabled. Plugins like Wordfence can help set up 2FA on your site alongside other security features they offer.
Nulled or Pirated Themes and Plugins
Nulled themes and plugins, premium copies distributed for free, are one of the most common ways to get malware onto WordPress sites. These files are modified to give attackers backdoor access to the site, which makes them hard to detect and impossible to kick out as long as the plugin or theme is active on the site.
How to fix it: Install themes and plugins directly from the official WordPress.org repository or from a verified author or marketplace, with a valid license for it. If you have ever installed a nulled plugin or theme, run a malware scan after removing the plugin or theme to remove any installed malicious code.
Why Knowing What Hackers Look For Matters
None of these are separate entities, as they work collectively in most cases. An un-updated plugin along with weak admin credentials and lack of WAF is much more vulnerable than a site that lacks only one of the above defenses. Fortunately, fixing these issues does not cost anything like a large company budget: simply updating your core, themes, and plugins, using unique and strong passwords with two-factor authentication, installing a reliable WAF, securing file permissions, and performing regular malware scans will cover all that makes you vulnerable.
It is important to understand that security does not mean making yourself unhackable but rather making you a harder target than the millions of other WordPress websites that fail to take care of the basics.
You can refer to the Essential Guide to Cyber Security for a guide on types of cyber threats and how to deal with these threats.
How Web Pro Geeks Can Help
It’s tough to manage all of these facets of your website on your own, but that is why our WordPress maintenance services exist. Our plan will make sure that all of these things are always taken care of for you!
If your site has shown any signs of hacking or if you would like a professional to take a look at your existing setup, our Security Help team can help give your site a quick tune-up. If you’re looking for someone to help you make important security and web-related decisions from an expert level, our Fractional Chief Web Officer will do just that.
Book a free consultation today, and let us help address your site security needs.
FAQs
Site owners often feel that their site is too small to attract any attention from anyone; however, what is really happening is that hackers use automated bots to scan through the web. They exploit weaknesses like outdated plugins or weak passwords to use your server resources for things like sending spam, hosting malware, or launching attacks on other sites.
While an SSL certificate will be very important when it comes to encrypting your data while it goes back and forth between your site and your customers, the SSL certificate cannot guarantee protection against hacking your site. This is because there are many ways hackers can still hack your site.
No, one of the easiest ways for attackers to break into your website is using nulled themes or plugins. This is because such files have been manipulated to include some sort of backdoor or malware that will give the attacker access to your website once you install them.
