Many attempts from Russia, but looking through the logs this attack came from all over the world!
This morning I woke up to an extremely full inbox on my computer. In excess of 80 messages letting me know that one of my client sites was under attack for the evening. Looking through the messages I found that the site hadn’t been compromised, but the attempts to access the site continues to this moment.
The attacks aren’t coming from one specific location. Instead they’re coming from all over the planet. Russia, America, Italy, Asia…..everywhere. It’s a bot network to be sure, and the bots are compromised computers that are probably privately owned. Most likely the owners don’t even know they’re part of the network. At some point in time they got some malware or a virus and they became agents for the hackers behind the attack.
Security is important! Even on your own personal computer.
Be smart about your security
If you’ve got a website out there on the Internet you need to know something. The net is a scary place. Sure, there are pretty websites, informative websites, and fun sites as well. But there are also hackers out there working day and night trying to get into your website and gain control. Not nice at all.
When you do a site install, you need to be sure you pay attention to security. Rule number one? Create unique user names. Rule 2? Create unique passwords. The user name “Admin” and password “12345” isn’t going to cut it. Seriously, first thing these hackers look for.
Today’s attack saw multiple login attempts with the user name “admin.” You wouldn’t believe how many people do WordPress installs and just go with Admin. It’s like they want to be hacked. Additionally, using things like your website address as a user name (I had a client who did that with his previous site)….sure fire way to let hackers get half way there.
Passwords are important too. These bot networks try as many combinations of passwords as they can. And if you haven’t secured your website? They’re going to keep trying constantly.
Fortunately all of our clients are protected with some pretty good security. If a user tries to login with a user name that isn’t on the site? Immediately blocked, so that’s good. But these bot networks just move on and use the next compromised computer in their network, and then that one gets blocked. When the attack is coming from all over the world? I get a lot of messages!
So, the lesson here? Strong user names, strong passwords, and a security plan for your website. If you don’t have all 3 in place its not a question of if you’ll get hacked, the question is when.