How Do Websites Get Hacked?
Websites getting hacked is exactly like your money getting stolen from your bank account. So it is really important to keep your website/websites safe and secure, even if you don’t have much data on it. The hosting space and the website domain are really important, and once their reputation is compromised, there is nothing which can get the visitors back on these websites.
We have discussed how to keep your website safe and secure in the previous blog. If you have not read the blog, read it here.
Hackers use a lot of different techniques to gain access to your website. So listing all these techniques will not be possible. Instead, we will list the most common techniques used by hackers and the damage these cyber attacks can cause to your website.
Let us take a look at the following types:
Access control attacks
The website and the account for your hosting is controlled through several interfaces, i.e. the backend dashboard, web hosting control panel, and the client area. Also, you might have FTP (file transfer protocol) and SSH (Secure Shell) in order to manage the files and its transfers, databases and configuration of servers.
Each and every method of connecting to your server and hosting account is protected by a set of credentials. So if anyone wants to hack into your server or gain access to your hosting dashboard, they will need to gain access to your login credentials. There are many methods of extracting someone’s username and passwords.
Human error
If you become carefree, even an honest mistake could cost you your website. For example, a new person who joined your organisation is given access to the backend to maintain the website. But, to decrease some of your load and create a new account for them, you give them the admin login credentials.This event has potentially created a scenario where the data of the website can be leaked and misused. And to top it all, it could be much worse if you cannot reset the password and the employee leaves the organisation.
Brute-force attacks
While doing a brute-force attack, any hacker will try and guess your username and password. They use various permutations and combinations to guess the alphanumeric combination which is used in your username and password.
First they will start with the basic combinations like “123456789” or “abcdefgh”. Statistics have shown that these are the most commonly used passwords, so the chances of logging in successfully are pretty high.
In case these combinations do not work, they will up the ante and switch to software based cracking tools, which run thousands of passwords and crack the correct login credentials.
These modern tools are very advanced and can guess very strong passwords. But hackers don’t often use them. It is because most of the users cannot remember different passwords. So most of the account holders will use the same or similar passwords for different accounts. Once a single account is breached, it exposes the login credentials for different accounts.
Social engineering
When hackers use social engineering to attack and gain access to your website, they impersonate someone you trust to actually gain access information from you. Phishing is the most common method of social engineering hacking, and is commonly associated with emails.
Man-in-the-middle
When a visitor interacts with your website using the internet, data travels between the computer and the host server. It covers many servers, routes and other things before being delivered to its destination. This data is transmitted in the form of packets and data enclosed in between them contains sensitive and crucial information. If the data packet is not protected or the data is not encrypted, it can be intercepted and misused.
Malware
Malware is a type of software with some malicious code which can infect your system and your server and divulge every bit of information to the hackers. You must always keep the anti malware software installed on your system and neutralise the threats as soon as you receive them.
A keylogger is a type of malware which acts as a password stealer.
It notes the key inputs from your keyboard whenever you try to login into your account and thus reveals your password..
Remote code execution
It is exactly what it sounds like. It is a security vulnerability which allows hackers to execute a code or software remotely. It means that they could gain access to your hosting server and use it for their own benefits.
File inclusion
A file inclusion attack is considered when the hackers exploit a vulnerability which references malicious codes. Its primary goal is to execute the malware on the server or the user’s system. This malicious code could be located in a remote location or it can even be hosted on the target account if the user supplied content is not checked and neutralised.
SQL injection
SQL injection allows hackers to exploit the vulnerabilities to execute malicious queries directly from the website’s text fields. They craft and insert a string of malicious codes, which allows them to gain access to the database to steal, delete or modify your website’s data.
Denial of service
These attacks are considered less severe because these attacks don’t steal data or harm the user’s system in any form. Instead, during these attacks, the hackers try to cause one of your server components to overload and fail, thus rendering your website inefficient and no-use for the visitors. It results in the website getting crashed or user’s experiencing a significant slowdown.
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is the most popular attack of this kind. Hackers use networks of infected devices to direct a huge amount of traffic on your website, resulting in server crashes and shutting the site down temporarily. But once your website has been attacked by DDoS, hackers generally won’t stop until their demands are met. They can again direct a DDoS attack towards your website causing it to shut down again.
In some cases, attackers demand a ransom from the site owner to stop these attacks, and if the site’s downtime is costing too much, paying the ransom makes much more sense.
Conclusion
Website security is dependent upon these factors and make sure to always be careful regarding the above mentioned methods with which hackers can try and gain access to the website. Your website might be new and you might think that it does not contain a lot of information but for a hacker, it will become easy money. And also they might try and exploit your other accounts using the login credentials.
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