Thursday, April 09, 2015

Alert: FBI warn WordPress sites to patch their sites.

It's a pretty bad sign when the FBI starts warning WordPress users to patch their sites.

www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/08/supercache_goes_ballistic_word_press_is_atrocious/

Every day in my logs I see probing where the links fail but they would appear to be targeted at WordPress sites and add-ins. I don't use WordPress but you see the 404 errors for page not found.

The problem with WordPress is it is free and many people with minimal IT skills install WordPress and add-ins and then simply don't keep the site updated with patches. This isn't just end users, but I've seen many sites hacked which have been run by others.

At JustLocal I'm happy to connect to a site provided by the business. The site can be a website, a social media site, or even a page within a directory. The aim of JustLocal is to help promote local business and as long as they have some form of presence on the internet, that is often sufficient to start assisting them. The number of sites that we've seen that were infected were quickly resolved.

If anyone does find an infected site please let us know. We can then advise the business owner and redirect the link until the site is no longer a risk to anyone.

If you do have a WordPress site keep in mind it is not set and forget. You need to be the IT person. You need to keep the WordPress software, the operating system software and all add-ins patched. Just as importantly make sure you have a working backup in place so you can recover if necessary. People are often unaware this is not included as part of their hosting and is often an additional charge, if it is available at all.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au
Helping local business to prosper.

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