You’ve developed a successful website, but wondered how malicious people can hack into it? Why is website piracy so common? How can hackers gain access to your website? How can you protect your website from hackers and other pirates? In this article, we answer these questions
You’ve developed a successful website, but wondered how malicious people can hack into it? Why is website piracy so common? How can hackers gain access to your website? How can you protect your website from hackers and other pirates? In this article, we answer these questions by presenting you with solutions to the problems associated with hacking your website.
THE CAUSES OF WEBSITE PIRACY
Website hacking has been around for a long time. Hackers aim to gain access to your websites and modify them for their own benefit, for example by adding links to their own sites or advertisements. They hope to earn additional income in the future. There are different causes of piracy, and the people targeted by piracy can be different. Here are some of the causes:
– Hackers hope to make money by buying or selling websites, or by using these sites to make money. a very popular website can be very profitable.
– Hackers simply hope to get money from you by asking you to pay a ransom. This practice is generally used by hackers who present themselves as technical support services and ask for a lot of money to help you fix the problem.
– Hackers hope to obtain confidential information through your website. This allows hackers to obtain personal information about you, your customers and others who use your website. They may use this information to steal information or other data, or to become identity thieves.
– Hackers hope to use your website to spread a virus, Trojan horse or other form of malicious code to other computers. These malicious codes can be used to obtain personal information or to steal sensitive information or data.
– Hackers hope to use your website to spread advertising or malware to other computers. These ads can be used to confuse Google’s SEO system and drive your visitors to other websites.
– Pirates hope to use your website to distribute illegal content. Illegal content may include software piracy, child pornography, illegal drugs, illegal weapons, personal customer information or other violations of the law.
– Hackers hope to use your website as an entry point for data theft or other criminal activities.
1. The basics of protecting your website
Your website can fall victim to a number of security breaches. Security breaches can occur when your website is subjected to malicious attacks, or when a hacker uses bad code to exploit security holes to gain access to your server or data. To ensure the security of your website, we recommend the use of one of the following programs:
– Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
– Port forwarding 80 to 443
– Anti-spamming
Secure Socket Layer :
The use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a secure method of protecting information in transit over the Internet protocol. This is a means of encrypting data used by Web servers to communicate with your visitors. When you ask your ISP to set up SSL for you, they establish a secure link between your web server and visitors to your site. Data sent by visitors is encrypted using a digital certificate, preventing malicious intrusions. There are different types of SSL servers:
– Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 1 (SSLv1) is no longer sufficient to meet today’s security requirements. It is widely known and used by cyber-criminals to hack into bank accounts.
– Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 2 (SSLv2) has been obsolete since 1998. It is very difficult to update and is not recommended for implementation.
– Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3 (SSLv3) is a more secure encryption method than SSLv1 or SSLv2, but it does have some weaknesses that make it less secure than other protocols.
– Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1 is a more secure encryption method than SSLv1, SSLv2 or SSLv3.
– Secure Socket Layer (SSL) 4 (SSLv4) is the currently recommended protocol for Web servers.
Port forwarding 80 to 443
Port 80 is the main port for web servers, i.e. the one used by default to access a website. The protocol used on this port is HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). This means that port 80 forwarding to port 443 must be enabled on your hosting provider. If you don’t, you risk missing out on traffic and losing visitors. Your site will also rank lower in search engines.
Most hosting providers automatically redirect port 80 to 443. If this is not the case, you should ask your web host to set it up for you.
Hosting companies often offer this option in their administration interface:
– or they call this option « Port forwarding »;
– or they call this option « Site redirection »;
– or they call this option « Domain name redirection ».
If you’re hosting your site with a hosting provider and have a domain name, you need to take this option into consideration. For the others, I’d say it’s still important, but if you host your site on free hosting, you can save yourself the trouble (but keep this in mind for the future).
If you’re not sure whether your domain name is hosted by you or by another host, a simple solution is to go to the Alexa.com website and type your domain name into the search window.
The Alexa version of your site must be similar or identical to the one you have on your administration interface. If this is not the case, your domain name is hosted on another provider.
If you’re using another host for your domain name, the redirection procedure is different from the one I’m about to explain.
Once you know that your domain name is hosted on the same provider as your site, you can move on to the next step.
Defining a redirection to another server is not done on a specific site, but on a configuration file.
In the case of WordPress, this is the .htaccess file in the wp-admin folder (the site’s root folder).
If you don’t know where the wp-admin folder is for your site, you can find it in the administration interface. I explain this at the end of the article.
Step 1: Open your hosting interface
In your administration interface, select your domain name from the list of sites.
You’ll then have access to a drop-down menu allowing you to choose the site you want to administer.
Click on the site you wish to configure and go to the Domain tab.
At the bottom of the page, click on Editor.
You’ll then have access to your domain name configuration file. It is located in the Domain folder.
Step 2: Save your work
Please note that the following operations may modify the hosting file. It is therefore important to save your changes.
If you don’t know how to make a backup of your configuration, I invite you to read this article: How to backup or restore a WordPress site
Step 3: Delete the contents of the .htaccess file
Delete the entire contents of the .htaccess file. There will be nothing left inside.
Step 4: Add a comment to the .htaccess file
Add the following lines to the beginning of the .htaccess file :
Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.exemple.com/$1 [L,R=301]
You can replace the domain name with your own.
2. Robot-based intrusion protection
To combat bots, there’s an option called Robots Txt.
This option allows you to set up a rejection response for software motion detectors that search the site’s content (such as Google or Bing).
Here is the configuration to be used:
Step 1: add a line to the .htaccess file
Add the following line to the beginning of the .htaccess file :
Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.exemple.com/$1 [L,R=301] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}!^/robots.txt$ RewriteRule .* /robots.txt [L]
You can replace the domain name with your own.
Step 2: create a robots.txt file in the /administration/ directory
Create a robots.txt file in the /administration/ directory:
TXT/Robots directory.txt
Step 3: create a robots.txt file in the /public/ directory
Create a robots.txt file in the /public/ directory:
TXT/Robots directory.txt
Step 4: delete the robots.txt file in the /administration/ directory
Delete the robots.txt file in the /administration/ directory.
Anti-intrusion protection through authentication systems (Login)
In the WordPress security module, you can install an authentication system that controls whether the user can connect to the site or not.
Here is the configuration to be used:
Add a line to the .htaccess file
Add the following line to the beginning of the .htaccess file :
Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC] Rewrite Cond %{REQUEST_URI}!^/robots.txt RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST RewriteRule ^(.*)$ – – [F,L]
You can find sample .htaccess files on the Internet. These files are generally optimized to help protect your site.
3. Protection against scripting attacks (XSS)
Scripting attacks (XSS) are attacks that use data sent by the user to modify the site’s HTML code.
You can use the anti-XSS function in the WordPress security module to protect your site against these attacks.
In the « Options » menu, check the Anti-XSS box.
This function is secure and does not detect any data as an attack.
You can then configure the parameters of this function.
The default setting protects against script attacks (XSS) by blocking all non-standard HTML tags, but you can configure the function as follows:
4. Protection against query attacks (SQLi)
Query-based attacks use data sent by the user to modify the site’s SQL code.
You can use the anti-SQLi function in the WordPress security module to protect your site against these attacks.
In the « Options » menu, check the Anti-SQLi box.
This function is secure and does not detect any data as an attack.
You can then configure the parameters of this function.
The default configuration protects against query attacks (SQLi) by blocking all non-standard SQL queries, but you can configure the .
5.protection against code injection attacks (XSSI)
Code injection attacks are attacks that use malicious scripts to modify the code on the website.
You can use the anti-XSSI function in the WordPress security module to protect your site against these attacks.
In the « Options » menu, check the Anti-XSSI box.
This function is secure and does not detect any data as an attack.
You can then configure the parameters of this function.
The default configuration protects against code injection attacks (XSSI) by blocking all XSSI requests.
5. Protection against injection attacks
Code injection attacks are attacks that use malicious scripts to modify the code on the website.
You can use the anti-SQLi function in the WordPress security module to protect your site against these attacks.
In the « Options » menu, check the Anti-SQLi box.
This function is secure and does not detect any data as an attack.
You can then configure the parameters of this function.
The default configuration protects against code injection attacks (SQLi) by blocking all SQLi requests.
Conclusion
We’ve seen how using security modules can help protect your site from hacker attacks.
You can use these modules in complete safety, as they are very well designed and tested before release.
With these WordPress modules for securing your site, you can be sure that your site is protected and that there’s nothing to change in the site’s security settings.
You can be sure that your site is totally secure.
In a future article, we’ll take a closer look at extensions for securing your website.
Article source: www.instants-web-hosting.fr