Microsoft’s WordPress Site Is Hacked! Could Your Site Be Next?

Jun 24, 2015 | News, Web Hosting

If Microsoft can get hacked, so can your WordPress website! No one is safe. Whether you are a small business, with just a couple of people working for you, or a huge business, with thousands of employees, everyone is prone if they don’t take site security seriously.

This past Wednesday, the Microsoft website, digitalconstitution.com, which is dedicated to fighting the US government on matters of surveillance and policy, was found to have numerous spam pages and links on its website. According to zdnet, the Microsoft site was running an older version of WordPress, which made it susceptible to the attack.

Although it’s not clear who was behind the attack, it appears to have been modified at 9:15pm ET last Wednesday evening.

Whoever hacked the site injected text with keywords, which are typically used to get more search engine hits, including words like ‘casino’, ‘roulette’ and ‘blackjack’.

I know it’s easy to think that your site could never get hacked, because there just isn’t anything on it that anyone wants. But, that simply isn’t the case. There are a variety of reasons for hackers to target a site, and it’s not just to steal information from it. Many a site has been hacked by a malicious attacker, just looking to disrupt it and bring the site down for the “fun of it.” 🙁

This is precisely why I encourage anyone who has a WordPress site, who isn’t internet savvy, or just simply doesn’t have the time to stay on top of it on a daily basis, to consider signing up for one of our WordPress Care Plans & Support Packages.

Running a WordPress site without taking care of updating things like the core WordPress software, themes and plug-ins, leaves your site vulnerable to security risks, hackers, components that don’t play well together and break your site when you update it yourself, and a variety of other problems that can bring your WordPress site to a screeching halt in no time flat! Protect yourself today with one of our maintenance plans.

hacked, maintenance, security, support, wordpress

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Nora Kramer

Designer + Brand Strategist at Nora Kramer Designs

Nora Kramer is a graphic designer, website developer, and online marketing consultant, based in the Tampa Bay, Florida area, with over two decades of experience in graphic design, website development and company branding. She also has a passion for photography and writing. Nora received the Charlie Award (1st Place) in 2002 for "Best Magazine Feature Article of the Year" from the Florida Magazine Association for a cover feature article she wrote for "Create," a graphic design magazine. You can follow all of her social media channels at about.me/norakramer.

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